ALPHA ZETA
BOX 7, H&GARD HALL

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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

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Columbus.
After a portrait by H err era.

HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES

FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY
OF AMERICA TO THE PRESENT DAY

BY

E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS

PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Witfo 400 11 (lustrations anfc flfcaps

VOLUME I.

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896

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GIFT OP

COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Press of J. T- Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York

TO MY WIFE

M1S6S3Q

E. Benjamin Andrews.
President of Brown University.

PREFACE

NOTWITHSTANDING the number of United
States histories already in existence, and
the excellence of many of them, I venture
to think that no apology is needed for
bringing forward another.

1. The work now presented to the pub
lic is believed to utilize, more than any
of its predecessors, the many valuable re
searches of recent years into the rich ar
chives of this and other nations.

2. Most of the briefer treatments of the
subject are manuals, intended for pupils in
schools, the conspicuous articulation so
necessary for this purpose greatly lessening
their interest for the general reader. The
following narrative will be found continu
ous as well as of moderate compass.

3. I have sought to make more promi
nent than popular histories have usually

\PREFACE

done, at the same time the political evolu
tion of our country on the one hand, and
the social culture, habits, and life of the
people on the other.

4. The work strives to observe scrupu
lous proportion in treating the different
parts and phases of our national career,
neglecting none and over-emphasizing
none. Also, while pronouncedly national
and patriotic, it is careful to be perfectly
fair and kind to the people of all sections.

5. Effort has been made to present the
matter in the most natural periods and
divisions, and to give such a title to each
of these as to render the table of contents
a truthful and instructive epitome of our
national past.

6. With the same aim the Fore-history
is exhibited in sharp separation from the
United States history proper, calling due
attention to what is too commonly missed,
the truly epochal character of the adoption
of our present Constitution, in 1789.

7. Copious illustration has been em
ployed, with diligent study to make it for

PREFACE 7

every reader in the highest degree an in
strument of instruction, delight, and culti
vation in art.

8. No pains has been spared to secure
perfect accuracy in all references to dates,
persons, and places, so that the volumes
may be used with confidence as a work of
reference. I am persuaded that much suc
cess in this has been attained, despite the
uncertainty still attaching to many matters
of this sort in United States history, espe
cially to dates.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, September 15, 1894.

CONTENTS

IN TROD UCTION

PAGE

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS . . . .21

Age and Origin of Man in America. — Primordial Americans
unlike Present Asiatics. — Resemblances between their Various
Branches. — Two Great Types. — The Mound-builders' Age. — De
sign of the Mounds. — Different Forms. — Towns and Cities. —
Proofs of Culture. — Arts. — Fate of the Mound-builders. — The
Indians. — Their Number. — Degree of Civilization. — Power of
Endurance. — Religion. — The Various Nations. — Original Brute
Inhabitants of North America. — Plants, Fruits, and Trees. —
Indian Agriculture.

(part first
THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

1492-1660

CHAPTER I. COLUMBUS 37

Bretons and Normans in the New World. — The Northmen
Question. — Marco Polo's Travels. — His Pictures of Eastern Asia.
— Influence on Columbus. — Early Life of Columbus. — His
Cruises and Studies. — Asia to be Reached by Sailing West. —

io CONTENTS

Appeals for Aid. — Rebuffs. — Success. — Sails from Palos. — The
Voyage. — America Discovered. — Columbus's Later Voyages and
Discoveries. — Illusion Respecting the New Land. — Amerigo
Vespucci. — Rise of the Name " America."

CHAPTER II. EARLY SPANISH AMERICA . . 62

Portugal and Spain Divide the Newly Discovered World. —
Spain gets most of America. — Voyage of de Solis. — Balboa Dis
covers the Pacific. — Ponce de Leon on the Florida Coast. — Ex
plorations by Grijalva. — Cortez Invades Mexico. — Subjugates
the Country. — De Ayllon's Cruise. — Magellan Circumnavigates
the Globe. — Narvaez's Expedition into Florida. — Its Sad Fate.
— De Soto. — His March. — Hardships. — Discovers the Missis
sippi. — His Death. — End of his Expedition. — French Settlement
in Florida. — St. Augustine. — French-Spanish Hostilities. — Rea
sons for Spain's Failure to Colonize far North. — Her Treatment
of the Natives. — Tyranny over her own Colonies.

CHAPTER III. EXPLORATION AND COLONIZA
TION BY THE FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH . 93

Verrazano. — " New France." — Carder Discovers St. Lawrence
Gulf and River. — Second Voyage. — Montreal. — Third. — De
Monts. — Champlain. — Founds Quebec. — Westward Explorations.
— John Cabot, Discoverer of the North American Main. —
Frobisher. — Tries for a Northwest Passage. — Second Expedition
for Gold. — Third. — Eskimo Tradition of Frobisher's Visits. —
Drake Sails round the World. — Cavendish Follows. — Raleigh's
Scheme. — Colony at Roanoke Island. — "Virginia." — Second
Colony. — Its Fate.

CHAPTER IV. THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA . 114

The Old Virginia Charter. — Jamestown Settled. — Company
and Colony. — Character of Early Virginia Population. — Progress.
— Products. — Slavery. — Agriculture the Dominant Industry. —
No Town Life. — Hardships and Dissensions. — John Smith.
—New Charter. — Delaware Governor. — The " Starving Time." —

CONTENTS II

Severe Rule of Dale and Argall. — The Change of 1612. — Poca-
hontas. — Indian Hostilities. — First American Legislature. — Sir
Thomas Wyatt. — Self-Government. — Virginia Reflects English
Political Progress. — Dissolution of the Company. — Charles I.
and Virginia. — Harvey, Wyatt, Berkeley. — Virginia under Crom
well.

PAGE

CHAPTER V. PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE

NORTH . . . . . . 131

The first " Independents." — John Smyth's Church at Gains
borough. — The Scrooby Church. — Plymouth Colony. — Settles
Plymouth. — Hardships. — Growth. — Cape Ann Settlement. — Mas
sachusetts Bay. — Size. — Polity. — Roger Williams. — His Views.
— His Exile. — Anne Hutchinson. — Rhode Island Founded. —
Settlement of Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield. — Saybrook. —
New Haven. — New Hampshire. — Maine. — New England Con
federation. — Its Function. — Its Failure.

CHAPTER VI. BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 150

Sir George Calvert Plants at Newfoundland. — Is Ennobled. — <
Sails for Virginia. — Grant of Maryland. — Lord Baltimore Dies.—
Succeeded by Cecil. — Government of Maryland. — Conflict with
Virginia. — Baltimore comes to Maryland. — Religious Freedom
in the Colony. — Clayborne's Rebellion. — First Maryland Assem
bly. — Anarchy. — Romanism Established. — Baltimore and Roger
Williams. — Maryland during the Civil War in England. — Death
of Baltimore. — Character. — Maryland under the Long Parliament.
— Puritan Immigration. — Founds Annapolis. — Rebellion. — Clay-
borne again. — Maryland and the Commonwealth. — Deposition
of Governor Stone. — Anti-Catholic Laws. — Baltimore Defied. —
Sustained by Cromwell. — Fendall's Rebellion. — Fails. — Mary
land at the Restoration.

CHAPTER VII. NEW NETHERLAND . . 165

Henry Hudson and his Explorations. — Enters Hudson River.
— His Subsequent Career. — And his Fate. — Dutch Trade on the

12 CONTENTS

Hudson. — " New Netherland." — Dutch West India Company. —
Albany Begun. — New Amsterdam. — Relations with Plymouth. —
De Vries on the Delaware. — Dutch Fort at Hartford. — Conflict
of Dutch with English. — Gustavus Adolphus. — Swedish Begin
nings at Wilmington, Delaware. — Advent of Kieft. — Maltreats
Indians. — New Netherland in 1647. — Stuyvesant's Excellent
Rule. — Conquers New Sweden. — And the Indians. — Conquest
of Dutch America by England. — " New York. ' — Persistence of
Dutch Influence and Traits.

PAGE

CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST INDIAN WARS . 181

Beginning of Indian Hostility. — Of Pequot War. — Mason's
Strategy. — And Tactics. — Capture of Pequot Fort. — Back to
Saybrook. — Extermination of Pequot Tribe. — Peace. — Miantono-
moh and Uncas. — Dutch War with Indians. — Caused by Kieft's
Impolicy. — Liquor. — Underhill Comes. — Mrs. Hutchinson's Fate.
Deborah Moody. — New Haven Refuses Aid. — Appeal to Holland.
— Underbill's Exploits. — Kieft Removed. — Sad Plight of New
Netherland. — Subsequent Hostilities and Final Peace.

PERIOD II

ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1660-1763

CHAPTER I. NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST

STUARTS ....... 201

Charles II. and Massachusetts. — Massachusetts about 1660. —
Its View of its Political Rights. — The King's View. — And Com
mands. — Commission of 1664. — Why Vengeance was Delayed. —
Boldness of the Colony. — It Buys Maine. — Fails to get New
Hampshire.— The King's Rage.— The Charter Vacated.— Charles
II. and Connecticut. — Prosperity of this Colony. — Rhode Island.
— Boundary Disputes of Connecticut. — Of Rhode Island.—

CONTENTS 13

George Fox and Roger Williams. — James II. King. — Andros
Governor. — Andros and Southern New England. — In Massachu
setts. — Revolution of 1688. — New Charter for Massachusetts. —
Defects and Merits.

PAGE

CHAPTER II. KING PHILIP'S WAR . . .220

Whites' Treatment of Red Men. — Indian Hatred. — Causes. —
Alexander's Death. — Philip King. — Scope of his Conspiracy. —
Murders Sausaman. — War Begun. — Nipmucks take Part. — War
in Connecticut Valley. — Bloody Brook. — The Swamp Fight at
South Kingston, R. I. — Central Massachusetts Aflame. — The
Rowlandson History. — Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode
Island again. — Connecticut Valley once more Invaded. — Turner's
Fails. — Philip's Death. — Horrors of the War. — Philip's Character.
— Fate of his Family.

CHAPTER III. THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT . 237

New England Home Life. — Religion its Centre. — The Farm
house. — Morning Devotions. — Farm Work. — Tools. — Diet. —
Neighborliness. — New England Superstitions. — Not Peculiar to
New England. — Sunday Laws. — Public Worship. — First Case of
Sorcery. — The Witch Executed. — Cotton Mather. — His Experi
ments. — His Book. — The Parris- Children Bewitched. — The
Manifestations. — The Trial. — Executions. — George Burroughs.
— Rebecca Nurse. — Reaction. — Forwardness of Clergy. — " Dev
il's Authority." — The End.

CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE COLONIES . . 257

English Conquest of New Netherland. — Duke of York's Gov
ernment. — Andros. — Revolution of 1688. — Leisler. — Problems
which Teased Royal Governors. — New Jersey. — Its Political
Vicissitudes. — William Penn. — Character. — Liberality of Pennsyl
vania Charter. — Penn and James II. — Penn's Services for his
Colony. — Prosperity of the Latter. — Fletcher's Rule. — Gabriel
Thomas's History of Pennsylvania. — Penn's Trials. — And Victory.
— Delaware,

14 CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER V. MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 273

Maryland after the Stuart Restoration. — Navigation Act. —
Boundary Disputes. — Liberality of Religion. — Agitation to Es
tablish Anglicanism. — Maryland under William and Mary. —
English Church Established. — Not Oppressive. — Fate of Virginia
after the Restoration. — Virginia's Spirit, Numbers, Resources.
— Causes of Bacon's Rebellion. — Evil of the Navigation Acts. —
Worthless Officials. — Course of the Rebellion. — Result. — Dul-
ness of the Subsequent History. — William and Mary College. —
Governor Spotswood. — Blackbeard. — Carolina. — Its Constitution.
— Conflict of Parties. — Georgia.

CHAPTER VI. GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS
IN THE COLONIES 293

Origin of American Political Institutions. — Local Self-Gov-
ernment. — Representation. — Relation of Colonies to England. —
Classification of Colonies. — Changes. — Conflict of Legal Views.—
Colonists' Contentions. — Taxation.

CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL

TIMES ........ 299

Population of the Colonies at Different Dates. — Differences
according to Sections. — Intellectual Ability. — Free Thought. —
Political Bent. — English Church in the Colonies. — Its Clergy. —
In New York. — The New England Establishment. — Hatred to
Episcopacy. — Counter-hatred. — Colleges and Schools. — News
papers. — Libraries. — Postal System. — Learned Professions. —
Epidemics. — Scholars and Artists. — Travelling. — Manufactures
and Commerce. — Houses. — Food and Dress. — Wigs. — Opposi
tion to Them. — Social Cleavage. — Redemptioners. — Penal Legis
lation. — Philadelphia Leads in Social Science.

CHAPTER VIII. ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN

AMERICA 323

The French in the Heart of the Continent. — Groseilliers,
Radisson, La Salle. — Joliet and Marquette Reach the Mississippi.

CONTENTS 15

— Baudin and Du Lhut. — La Salle Descends to the Gulf. — " Chi
cago." — The Portages. — La Salle's Expedition from France to
the Mississippi. — Its Fate. — French, Indians, and English. —
France's Advantage. — Numbers of each Race in America. —
Causes of England's Colonial Strength. — King William's War. —
The Schenectady Massacre. — Other Atrocities. — Anne's War.
— Deerfield. — Plans for Striking Back. — Second Capture of Port
Royal. — Rasle's Settlement Raided. — George's War. — Capture of
Louisburg. — Saratoga Destroyed. — Scheme to Retaliate. — Failure.
— French Vigilance and Aggression.

PAGE

CHAPTER IX. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 349

Struggle Inevitable. — George Washington. — Fights at Great
Meadows. — War Begun. — English Plans of Campaign. — Brad-
dock's March. — Defeat and Death. — Prophecy Regarding Wash
ington. — The " Evangeline " History. — London's Incompetence. —
Pitt at the Head of Affairs.— Will Take Canada.— Louisburg
Recaptured. — " Pittsburgh." — Triple Movement upon Canada. —
The Plains of Abraham. — Quebec Capitulates. — Peace of Paris.
— Conspiracy of Pontiac.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

COLUMBUS. (After a portrait by Herrera), . . Frontispiece

TEMPLE MOUND IN MEXICO, 23

BIG ELEPHANT MOUND, WISCONSIN, .... 25

DIGHTON ROCK, ........ 39

THE OLD STONE MILL AT NEWPORT, R. I., . . . 40
PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL — " THE NAVIGATOR." (From

an old print), ........ 45

QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN, ...... 48

COLUMBUS BEGGING AT THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT, . 50
EMBARKATION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT PALOS.

(From an old print), ....... 53

AMERIGO VESPUCCI. (Fac-simile of an old print), . . 59

VASCO DA GAMA. (From an old print), .... 63

BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN, ... 67

PONCE DE LEON, 69

HERNANDO CORTES. (From an old print), . . .7*

MONTEZUMA MORTALLY WOUNDED BY HIS OWN SUBJECTS, 75

DEATH OF MAGELLAN, ....... 79

FERDINAND DE SOTO, 81

A PALISADED INDIAN TOWN IN ALABAMA, .... 83

BURIAL OF DE SOTO IN THE MISSISSIPPI AT NIGHT, . . 85

FORT CAROLINA ON THE RIVER OF MAY, .... 86

PEDRO MELENDEZ, 87

INDIANS DEVOURED BY DOGS. (From an old print), . . 89

VERRAZANO, THE FLORENTINE NAVIGATOR, ... 94
JACQUES CARTIER. (From an old print), . . . -95

SEBASTIAN CABOT. (From an old print), . . . 101

AN INDIAN VILLAGE AT THE ROANOKE SETTLEMENT, . . 106

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, 108

SIR WALTER RALEIGH. (From an old print), . . . 109
VOL. i. — 2

1 8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

QUEEN ELIZABETH, 112

KING JAMES I. (From Mr. Henry Irving's Collection), . 115

TOBACCO PLANT, n9

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, ....... 120

POCAHONTAS SAVING CAPTAIN SMITH'S LIFE. '(From Smith's

" General History "), ....... 122

THE COUNCIL OF POWHATAN. (From Smith's "General

History"), . 125

POCAHONTAS, 127

SIGNATURE OF BERKELEY, 130

PLYMOUTH HARBOR, ENGLAND, 132

HARBOR OF PROVINCE-TOWN, CAPE COD, WHERE THE PIL
GRIMS LANDED, 133

THE LIFE OF THE COLONY AT CAPE COD, .... 134

SIGNATURES TO PLYMOUTH PATENT, . . . . 136
SITE OF FIRST CHURCH AND GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S HOUSE

AT PLYMOUTH, 137

GOVERNOR WINTHROP, 139

FIRST CHURCH IN SALEM, 140

SEAL OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY COMPANY, . . . .141

ROGER WILLIAMS' HOUSE AT SALEM, .... 143

EDWARD WINSLOW, 144

MARYLAND SHILLING, . . . . . . . 150

HENRIETTA MARIA, . . . . . . . . 152

SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM CLAYBORNE, . . 154
CLAYBORNE'S TRADING POST ON KENT ISLAND, . . .155

FIGHT BETWEEN CLAYBORNE AND THE ST. MARY'S SHIP, 157

OLIVER CROMWELL, 161

SEAL OF NEW AMSTERDAM, 166

PETER STUYVESANT, 167

SEAL OF NEW NETHERLAND, 169

EARLIEST PICTURE OF NEW AMSTERDAM, . . . .171

DE VRIES, 172

COSTUMES OF SWEDES, . . . . . . .173

THE OLD STADT HUYS AT NEW AMSTERDAM, . . 176
NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY, 177

THE DUKE OF YORK, AFTERWARDS JAMES II., . . .178

THE TOMB OF STUYVESANT, ...... 179

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 19

PAGE

ATTACK ON THE FORT OF THE PEQUOTS ON THE MYSTIC

RIVER, 184, 185

ATTACK ON THE PEQUOT FORT, . . . . . .188

SIGNATURE OF MIANTONOMOH, 191

THE GRAVE OF MIANTONOMOH, 193

TOTEM OR TRIBE MARK OF THE FIVE NATIONS, . . 199

KING CHARLES II., 203

JOHN WlNTHROP THE YOUNGER, 2IO

SIR EDMOND ANDROS, 214

THE CHARTER OAK AT HARTFORD, .... 216

BOX IN WHICH THE CONNECTICUT CHARTER WAS KEPT, . 219

THE MONUMENT AT BLOODY BROOK, .... 227

GOFFE AT HADLEY, 229

INCREASE MATHER, 244

COTTON MATHER, 246

OLD TITUBA THE INDIAN, 248

LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR STOUGHTON, .... 250

FAC-SIMILE OF SHERIFF'S RETURN OF AN EXECUTION, . 252

SLOUGHTER SIGNING LEISLER'S DEATH WARRANT, . . 260

SEAL OF THE CARTERETS, 262

SEAL OF EAST JERSEY, 263

WAMPUM RECEIVED BY PENN IN COMMEMORATION OF THE

INDIAN TREATY, 264

WILLIAM PENN, 265

THE TREATY MONUMENT, KENSINGTON, .... 268

THE PENN MANSION IN PHILADELPHIA, .... 270

CHARLES, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE, 274

REV. DR. BLAIR, FIRST PRESIDENT OF WILLIAM AND MARY

COLLEGE, 281

GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE, .... 283

LORD SHAFTESBURY, 285

SEAL OF THE PROPRIETORS OF CAROLINA, . . . 286

JOHN LOCKE, 287

SAVANNAH. (From a print of i74TX .... 289

JAMES OGLETHORPE, 29X

COSTUMES ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY, 302, 303, 3°6, 307

JAMES LOGAN, 310

KING WILLIAM, 312

20 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

QUEEN MARY, 313

CHIEF JUSTICE SEWALL, 319

THE PILLORY, 321

SIGNATURP: OF JOLLIET (old spelling), ..... 323

TOTEM OF THE Sioux, ....... 323

A Sioux CHIEF, 324

TOTEM OF THE ILLINOIS, . . . . . . 325

THE RECEPTION OF JOLIET AND MARQUETTE BY THE ILLI
NOIS, 327

Louis XIV., 331

COINS STRUCK IN FRANCE FOR THE COLONIES, . . 332

ASSASSINATION OF LA SALLE, ...... 333

NEW ORLEANS IN 1719, . 334

SIGNATURE OF D'IBERVILLE, 335

THE ATTACK ON SCHENECTADY, ..... 337

HANNAH DUSTIN'S ESCAPE, ...... 339

QUEEN ANNE, 343

GOVERNOR SHIRLEY, 345

SIR WILLIAM PEPPERRELL, 346

THE AMBUSCADE, . . . . . . . . 351

THE DEATH OF BRADDOCK, 357

MONTCALM, 361

WILLIAM PITT, 362

GENERAL WOLFE, ........ 364

LANDING OF WOLFE, ....... 366

QUEBEC IN 1730. (From an old print), .... 367

BOUQUET'S REDOUBT AT PITTSBURGH, .... 369

LIST OF MAPS

GLOBUS MARTINI BEHAIM NARINBERGENSIS, 1492, . . 42

EUROPEAN PROVINCES IN 1655, . . . . facing 176

MARQUETTE'S MAP, ........ 330

PLAN OF PORT ROYAL, NOVA SCOTIA, .... 341

MAP SHOWING POSITION OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH FORTS

AND SETTLEMENTS, 350

BRADDOCK'S ROUTE, ........ 354

MAP OF BRADDOCK'S FIELD, 356

INTRODUCTION

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

MAN made his appearance on the west
ern continent unnumbered ages ago, not
unlikely before the close of the glacial
period. It is possible that human life
began in Asia and western North America
sooner than on either shore of the Atlan
tic. Nothing wholly forbids the belief that
America was even the cradle of the race,
or one of several cradles, though most
scientific writers prefer the view that our
species came hither from Asia. De Na-
daillac judges it probable that the ocean
was thus crossed not at Behring Strait
alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands
as well. We may think of successive waves
of such immigration — perhaps the easiest
way to account for certain differences
among American races.

22 INTRODUCTION

It is, at any rate, an error to speak of
the primordial Americans as derived from
any Asiatic stock at present existing or
known to history. The old Americans had
scarcely an Asiatic feature. Their habits
and customs were emphatically peculiar to
themselves. Those in which they agreed
with the trans-Pacific populations, such as
fashion of weapons and of fortifications,
elements of folk-lore, religious ideas, tra
ditions of a flood, belief in the destruction
of the world by fire, and so on, are nearly
all found the world over, the spontaneous
creations of our common human intelli
gence.

The original American peoples, various
and unlike as they were, agreed in four
traits, three of them physical, one mental,
which mark them off as in all likelihood
primarily of one stock after all, and as dif
ferent from any Old World men : (i) They
had low, retreating foreheads. (2) Their
hair was black. (3) It was also of a pecul
iar texture, lank, and cylindrical in section,
never wavy. And (4) their languages were

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS

polysynthetic, forming a class apart from
all others in the world. The peoples of
America, if from Asia, must date back to a
time when speech itself was in its infancy.
The numerous varieties of ancient
Americans reduce to two distinct types

Temple Mound in Mexico.

—the Dolicocephalous or long-skulled,
and the Brachycephalous or short-skulled.
Morton names these types respectively
the Toltecan and the - American proper.
The Toltecan type was represented by
the primitive inhabitants of Mexico and
by the Mound-builders of our Mississippi

24 INTRODUCTION

Valley ; the American proper, by the Indi
ans. The Toltecans made far the closer
approach to civilization, though the others
possessed a much greater susceptibility
therefor than the modern Indians of our
prairies would indicate.

Of the Mound-builders painfully little
is known. Many of their mounds still
remain, not less mysterious or interest
ing than the pyramids of Egypt, perhaps
almost equally ancient. The skeletons
exhumed from them often fly into dust as
soon as exposed to air, a rare occurrence
with the oldest bones found in Europe.
On the parapet-crest of the Old Fort at
Newark, O., trees certainly five hundred
years old have been cut, and they could
not have begun their growth till long after
the earth-works had been deserted. In
some mounds, equally aged trees root in
the decayed trunks of a still anterior
growth.

Much uncertainty continues to shroud
the design of these mounds. Some were
for military defence, others for burial places,

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS 25

others for lookout stations, others appar
ently for religious uses. Still others, it is
supposed, formed parts of human dwellings.
That they proceeded from intelligence and
reflection is clear. Usually, whether they
are squares or circles, their construction
betrays nice, mathematical exactness, un
attainable save by the use of instruments.

Big Elephant Mound, Wisconsin.

Many constitute effigies — of birds, fishes,
quadrupeds, men. In Wisconsin is a mound
135 feet long and well proportioned, much
resembling an elephant ; in Adams County,
O., a gracefully curved serpent, 1,000 feet
long, with jaws agape as if to swallow an
egg-shaped figure in front ; in Granville, in
the same State, one in the form of a huge
crocodile ; in Greenup County, Ky., an

2 6 INTR OD UCTION

image of a bear, which seems leaning for
ward in an attitude of observation, measur
ing 53 feet from the top of the back to the
end of the foreleg, and 105^ feet from
the tip of the nose to the rear of the hind
foot.

The sites of towns and cities were art
fully selected, near navigable rivers and
their confluences, as at Marietta, Cincinnati,
and in Kentucky opposite the old mouth of
the Scioto. Points for defence were chosen
and fortified with scientific precision. The
labor expended upon these multitudinous
structures must have been enormous, imply
ing a vast population and extensive social,
economic, and civil organization. The Ca-
hokia mound, opposite St. Louis, is 90 feet
high and 900 feet long.

The Mound-builders made elegant pot
tery, of various design and accurate shapes,
worked bone and all sorts of stones, and
even forged copper. There are signs that
they understood smelting this metal. They
certainly mined it in large quantities, and
carried it down the Mississippi hundreds of

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS 27

miles from its source on Lake Superior.
They must have been masters of river navi
gation, but their mode of conveying vast
burdens overland, destitute of efficient draft
animals as they apparently were, we can
hardly even conjecture.

The Mound-builders, as we have said,
were related to the antique populations of
Mexico and Central America, and the most
probable explanation of their departure
from their Northern seats is that in face of
pestilence, or of some overpowering human
foe, they retreated to the Southwest, there
to lay, under better auspices, the foundations
of new states, and to develop that higher
civilization whose relics, too little known,
astound the student of the past, as greatly
as do the stupendous pillars of Carnac or
the grotesque animal figures of Khorsabad
and Nimrud.

So much has been written about the
American Indians that we need not discuss
them at length. They were misnamed In
dians by Columbus, who supposed the land
he had discovered to be India. At the time

2 8 INTR OD UCTION

of his arrival not more than two hundred
thousand of them lived east of the Missis
sippi, though they were doubtless far more
numerous West and South. Whence they
came, or whether, if this was a human deed
at all, they or another race now extinct
drove out the Mound-builders, none can
tell.

Of arts the red man had but the rudest.
He made wigwams, canoes, bone fish-hooks
with lines of hide or twisted bark, stone
tomahawks, arrow-heads and spears, clothing
of skins, wooden bows, arrows, and clubs.
He loved fighting, finery, gambling, and
the chase. He domesticated no animals
but the dog and possibly the hog. Some
times brave, he was oftener treacherous,
cruel, revengeful. His power of endurance
on the trail or the warpath was incredible,
and if captured, he let himself be tortured
to death without a quiver or a cry. Though
superstitious, he believed in a Great Spirit
to be worshipped without idols, and in a
future life of happy hunting and feasting.

Whether, at the time of which we now

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS 29

speak, the Indians were an old race, already
beginning to decline, or a fresh race, which
contact with the whites balked of its devel
opment, it is difficult to say. Their career
since best accords with the former supposi
tion. In either case we may assume that
their national groupings and habitats were
nearly the same in 1500 as later, when these
became accurately known. In the eigh
teenth century the Algonquins occupied all
the East from Nova Scotia to North Caro
lina, and stretched west to the Mississippi.
At one time they numbered ninety thou
sand. The Iroquois or Five Nations had
their seat in Central and Western New
York. North and west of them lived the
Hurons or Wyandots. The Appalachians,
embracing Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws,
Chickasaws, Seminoles, and a number of
lesser tribes, occupied all the southeastern
portion of what is now the United States.
West of the Mississippi were the Dakotas
or Sioux.

Since the white man's arrival upon these
shores, very few changes have occurred

30 INTRODUCTION

among the brute inhabitants of North
America. A few species, as the Labrador
duck and the great auk, have perished.
America then possessed but four animals
which had appreciable economic value ; the
dog, the reindeer at the north, which the
Mound-builders used as a draft animal but
the Indians did not, and the llama and the
paco south of the equator. Every one of
our present domestic animals originated
beyond the Atlantic, being imported hither
by our ancestors. The Indians of the lower
Mississippi Valley, when De Soto came,
had dogs, and also what the Spaniards
called hogs, perhaps peccaries, but neither
brute was of any breed now bred in the
country. A certain kind of dogs were na
tive also to the Juan Fernandez and the
Falkland Islands.

Mr. Edward John Payne is doubtless cor
rect in maintaining, in 'his "History of the
New World called America," that the back
wardness of the American aborigines was
largely due to their lack of animals suitable
for draft or travel or producing milk or

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS 31

flesh good for food. From the remotest
antiquity Asiatics had the horse, ass, ox
and cow, camel and goat — netting ten times
the outfit in useful animals which the Peru
vians, Mexicans, or Indians enjoyed.

The vegetable kingdom of Old America
was equally restricted, which also helps ex
plain its low civilization. At the advent of
the Europeans the continent was covered
with forests. Then, though a few varieties
may have since given out and some im
ported ones run wild, the undomesticated
plants and trees were much as now. Not
so the cultivated kinds. The Indians were
wretched husbandmen, nor had the Mound-
builders at all the diversity of agricultural
products so familiar to us. Tobacco, In
dian corn, cocoa, sweet potatoes, potatoes,
the custard apple,, the Jerusalem artichoke,
the guava, the pumpkin and squash, the
papaw and the pineapple, indigenous to
North America, had been under cultivation
here before Columbus came, the first four
from most ancient times. The manioc or
tapioca-plant, the red-pepper plant, the mar-

32 INTRODUCTION

malade plum, and the tomato were raised in
South America before 1500. The persim
mon, the cinchona tree, millet, the Virginia
and the Chili strawberry are natives of this
continent, but have been brought under
cultivation only within the last three cen
turies.

The four great cereals, wheat, rye, oats,
and rice, constituting all our main food
crops but corn, have come to us from
Europe. So have cherries, quinces, and
pears, also hops, currants, chestnuts, and
mushrooms. The banana, regarded by von
Humboldt as an original American fruit,
modern botanists derive from Asia. With
reference to apples there may be some
question. Apples of a certain kind flour
ished in New England so early after the
landing of the Pilgrims that it is difficult
to suppose the fruit not to have been
indigenous to this continent. Champlain,
in 1605 or 1606, found the Indians about
the present sites of Portland, Boston, and
Plymouth in considerable agricultural pros
perity, with fields of corn and tobacco,

AMERICA BEFORE COLUMBUS 33

gardens rich in melons, squashes, pumpkins,
and beans, the culture of none of which
had they apparently learned from white
men. Mr. Payne's generalization, that su
perior food-supply occasioned the Old
World's primacy in civilization, and also
that of the Mexicans and Peruvians here,
seems too sweeping, yet it evidently con
tains large truth.

VOL. I. — 3

PART FIRST
THE FORE-HISTORY

PERIOD I.

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT
1492-1660

CHAPTER I.

COLUMBUS

THERE is no end to the accounts of
alleged discoveries of America before Co
lumbus. Most of these are fables. It is,
indeed, nearly certain that hardy Basque,
Breton, and Norman fishermen, adventur
ing first far north, then west, had sighted
Greenland and Labrador, and become well
acquainted with the rich fishing-grounds
about Newfoundland and the Saint Law
rence Gulf. Many early charts of these
regions, without dates, and hitherto re
ferred to Portuguese navigators of a time
so late as 1500, are now thought to be

38 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1000

tKe work of these earlier voyagers. They
found the New World, but considered it a
part of the Old.

Important, too, is the story of supposed
Norse sea-rovers hither, derived from cer
tain Icelandic manuscripts of the four
teenth century. It is a pleasing narrative,
that of Lief Ericson's sail in 1000-1001 to
Helluland, Markland, and at last to Vine-
land, and of the subsequent tours by Thor-
wald Ericson in 1002, Thorfinn Karlsefne,
1007-1009, and of Helge and Finnborge in
ion, to points still farther away. Such
voyages probably occurred. As is well
known, Helluland has been interpreted to
be Newfoundland ; Markland, Nova Scotia ;
and Vineland, the country bordering Mount
Hope Bay in Bristol, R. I. These identi
fications are possibly correct, and even if
they are mistaken, Vineland may still have
been somewhere upon the coast of what is
now the United States.

In the present condition of the evidence,
however, we have to doubt this. No
scholar longer believes that the writing

looo]

COLUMBUS

39

on Dighton Rock is Norse, or that the
celebrated Skeleton in Armor found at
Fall River was a Northman's, or that the
old Stone Mill at Newport was constructed
by men from Iceland. Even if the manu
scripts, composed between three and four

Dighton Rock.

hundred years after the events which they
are alleged to narrate, are genuine, and if
the statements contained in them are true,
the latter are far too indefinite to let us
be sure that they are applicable to United
States localities.

But were we to go so far as to admit
that the Northmen came here and began

40 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1260

the settlements ascribed to them, they cer
tainly neither appreciated nor published
their exploits. Their colony, wherever it
was, endured but for a day, and it, with its
locality, speedily passed from knowledge in
Scandinavia itself. America had not yet,
in effect, been discovered.

We must remember that long anterior

to Columbus's
day unbiassed
and thoughtful
men had come
to believe the
earth to be
round. They
also knew that
Europe con
stituted but a small part of it. In the year
1260 the Venetian brothers Niccolo and
Maffeo Polo made their way to China, the
first men from Western Europe ever to
travel so far. They returned in 1269, but
in 1271 set out again, accompanied by Nic-
colo's son, a youth of seventeen. This son
was the famous Marco Polo, whose work,

The Old Stone Mill at Newport, R. I.

i3oo] COLUMBUS 41

"The Wonders of the World," reciting his
extended journeys through China and the
extreme east and southeast of Asia, and his
eventful voyage home by sea, ending in
1295, has come down to our time, one of
the most interesting volumes in the world.
Friar Orderic's eastern travels in 1322-
1330, as appropriated by Sir John Mande-
ville, were published before 1371.

Columbus knew these writings, and the
reading and re-reading of them had made
him an enthusiast. In Polo's book he had
learned of Mangi and Far Cathay, with
their thousands of gorgeous cities, the
meanest finer than any then in Europe ; of
their abounding mines pouring forth infi
nite wealth, their noble rivers, happy popu
lations, curious arts, and benign govern
ment. Polo had told him of Cambalu
(Peking), winter residence of the Great
Khan, Kublai — Cambalu with its palaces of
marble, golden-roofed, its guard of ten thou
sand soldiers, its imperial stables containing
five thousand elephants, its unnumbered
army, navy, and merchant marine ; of oxen

42 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1300

huge as elephants ; of richest spices, nuts
large as melons, canes fifteen yards long,

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silks, cambrics, and the choicest furs ; and
of magic Cipango (Japan), island of pearls,
whose streets were paved with gold.

1456] COLUMBUS 43

Columbus believed all this, and it co
operated with his intense and even bigoted
religious faith to kindle in him an all-con
suming ambition to reach this distant. Eden
by sea, that he might carry the Gospel to
those opulent heathen and partake their
unbounded temporal riches in return. Poor
specimen of a saint as Columbus is now
known to have been, he believed himself
divinely called to this grand enterprise.

Christopher Columbus, or Christobal Co
lon, as he always signed himself after he
entered the service of Spain, was born in
Genoa about 1456. Little is certainly
known of his early life. His father was a
humble wool-carder. The youth possessed
but a sorry education, spite of his few
months at the University of Pavia. At the
age of fourteen he became a sailor, knock
ing about the world in the roughest man
ner, half the time practically a pirate. In
an all-day's sea fight, once, his ship took
fire and he had to leap overboard ; but
being a strong swimmer he swam, aided by
an oar, eight leagues to land.

44 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1470

From 14/0 to 1484 we find him in Portu
gal, the country most interested and en
gaged then in ocean-going and discovery.
Here he must have known Martin Behem,
author of the famous globe, finished in
1492, whereon Asia is exhibited as reaching
far into the same hemisphere with Europe.
Prince Henry of Portugal earnestly patron
ized all schemes for exploration and dis
covery, and the daughter, Philippa, of one
of his captains, Perestrello, Columbus mar
ried. With her he lived at Porto Santo in
the Madeiras, where he became familiar
with Correo, her sister's husband, also a dis
tinguished navigator. The islanders fully
believed in the existence of lands in the
western Atlantic. West winds had brought
to them strange woods curiously carved,
huge cane-brakes like those of India de
scribed by Ptolemy, peculiarly fashioned
canoes, and corpses with skin of a hue un
known to Europe or Africa.

Reflecting on these things, studying
Perestrello's and Correo's charts and ac
counts of their voyages, corresponding with

Prince Henry of Portugal — " The Navigator."
From an old print.

1475] COLUMBUS 47

Toscanelli and other savans, himself an
adept in drawing maps and sea-charts, for
a time his occupation in Lisbon, cruising
here and there, once far northward to Ice
land, and talking with navigators from
every Atlantic port, Columbus became ac
quainted with the best geographical science
of his time.

This had convinced him that India could
be reached by sailing westward. The theo
retical possibility of so doing was of course
admitted by all who held the earth to be a
sphere, but most regarded it practically im
possible, in the then condition of navigation,
to sail the necessary distance. Columbus
considered the earth far smaller than was
usually thought, a belief which we find
hinted at so early as 1447, upon the famous
mappe-monde of the Pitti Palace in Florence,
whereon Europe appears projected far
round to the northwest. Columbus seems
to have viewed this extension as a sort of
yoke joining India to Scandinavia by the
north. He judged that Asia, or at least
Cipango, stretched two-thirds of the way to

48 DISCO VER Y AND SETTLEMENT [1484

Europe, India being twice as near west
ward as eastward. Thirty or forty days he
deemed sufficient for making it. Tosca-
nelli and Behem as well as he held this
belief ; he dared boldly to act upon it.

Queen Isabella of Spain.

But to do so required resources. There
are indications that Columbus at some
time, perhaps more than once, urged his
scheme upon Genoa and Venice. If so it
was in vain. Nor can we tell whether such
an attempt, if made, was earlier or later
than his plea before the court of Portugal,

1484] COLUMBUS 49

for this cannot be dated. The latter was
probably in 1484. King John II. was im
pressed, and referred Columbus's scheme to
a council of his wisest advisers, who de
nounced it as visionary. Hence in 1485 or
1486 Columbus proceeded to Spain to lay
his project before Ferdinand and Isabella.
On the way he stopped at a Franciscan
convent near Palos, begging bread for him
self and son. The Superior, Marchena, be
came interested in him, and so did one of
the Pinzons — famous navigators of Palos.
The king and queen were at the time hold
ing court at Cordova, and thither Columbus
went, fortified with a recommendation from
Marchena. The monarchs were engrossed
in the final conquest of Granada, and Co
lumbus had to wait through six weary and
heart-sickening years before royal attention
was turned to his cause. It must have been
during this delay that he despatched his
brother Bartholomew to England with an
appeal to Henry VII. Christopher had
brought Alexander Geraldinus, the scholar,
and also the Archbishop of Toledo, to es-

VOL. I. — 4

5o DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1484

pouse his mission, and finally, at the latter's
instance, Ferdinand, as John of Portugal

Columbus begging at the Franciscan Convent.

had done, went so far as to convene, at
Salamanca, a council of reputed scholars to

i492] COLUMBUS 51

pass judgment upon Columbus and his
proposition. By these, as by the Portu
guese, he was declared a misguided enthu
siast. They were too much behind the age
even to admit the spherical figure of the
earth. According to Scripture, they said,
the earth is flat, adding that it was contrary
to reason for men to walk heads downward,
or snowr and rain to ascend, or trees to
grow with their roots upward.

The war for Granada ended, Santangel
and others of his converts at court secured
Columbus an interview with Isabella, but
his demands seeming to her arrogant, he
was dismissed. Nothing daunted, the hero
had started for France, there to plead as he
had pleaded in Portugal and Spain already,
when to his joy a messenger overtook him
with orders to come once more before the
queen.

Fuller thought and argument had con
vinced this eminent woman that the experi
ment urged by Columbus ought to be tried,
and a contract was soon concluded, by
which, on condition that he should bear

52 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1492

one-eighth the expense of the expedition,
the public chest of Castile was to furnish
the remainder. The story of the crown
jewels having been pledged for this pur
pose is now discredited. If such pledging
occurred, it was earlier, in prosecuting the
war with the Moors. The whole sum
needed for the voyage was about fifty thou
sand dollars. Columbus was made admiral,
also viceroy of whatever lands should be
discovered, and he was to have ten per cent,
of all the revenues from such lands. For
his contribution to the outfit he was in
debted to the Pinzons.

This arrangement was made in April or
May, 1492, and on the third of the next
August, after the utmost difficulty in ship
ping crews for this sail into the sea of dark
ness, Columbus put out from Palos with
one hundred and twenty men, on three
ships. These were the Santa Maria, the
Nina, and the Pinta. The largest, the
Santa Maria, was of not over one hun
dred tons, having a deck-length of sixty-
three feet, a keel of fifty-one feet, a draft of

Embarkation of Christopher Columbus at Palos.
From an old print.

1492] COLUMBUS 55

ten feet six inches, and her mast-head sixty
feet above sea-level. She probably had
four anchors, with hemp cables.

From Palos they first bore southward to
the Canary Islands, into the track of the
prevalent east winds, then headed west, for
Cipango, as Columbus supposed, but really
toward the northern part of Florida. When
a little beyond what he regarded the longi
tude of Cipango, noticing the flight of birds
to the southwest, he was induced to follow
these, which accident made his landfall
occur at Guanahani (San Salvador), in the
Bahamas, instead of the Florida coast.

Near midnight, between October nth
and 1 2th, Columbus, being on the watch,
descried a light ahead. About two o'clock
on the morning of the i2th the lookout on
the Pinta distinctly saw land through the
moonlight. When it was day they went on
shore. The i2th of October, 1492, there
fore, was the date on which for the first
time, so far as history attests with assur
ance, a European foot pressed the soil of
this continent. Adding nine days to this

56 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1493

to translate it into New Style, we have
October 2ist as the day answering to that
on which Columbus first became sure that
his long toil and watching had not been in
vain.

The admiral having failed to note its
latitude and longitude, it is not known
which of the Bahamas was the San Salva
dor of Columbus, whether Grand Turk
Island, Cat (the present San Salvador),
Watling, Mariguana, Acklin, or Samana,
though the last named well corresponds
with his description. Mr. Justin Winsor,
however, and with him a majority of the
latest critics, believes that Watling's Island
was the place. Before returning to Spain,
Columbus discovered Cuba, and also Hayti
or Espagnola (Hispaniola), on the latter of
which islands he built a fort.

In a second voyage, from Cadiz, 1493-
1496, the great explorer discovered the
Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. In a third,
1498-1500, he came upon Trinidad and the
mainland of South America, at the mouth
of the Orinoco. This was later by thirteen

i5oo] COLUMBUS 57

months and a week than the Cabots' land
fall at Labrador or Nova Scotia, though
a year before Amerigo Vespucci saw the
coast of Brazil. It was during this third
absence that Columbus, hated as an Italian
and for his undeniable greed, was super
seded by Bobadilla, who sent him and his
brother home in chains. Soon free again,
he sets off in 1502 upon a fourth cruise, in
which he reaches the coast of Honduras.

To the day of his death, however, the
discoverer of America never suspected that
he had brought to light a new continent.
Even during this his last expedition he
maintained that the coast he had touched
was that of Mangi, contiguous to -Cathay,
and that nineteen days of travel overland
would have taken him to the Ganges. He
arrived in Spain on September 12, 1504,
and died at Segovia on May 2Oth of the
next year. His bones are believed to rest
in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, trans
ported thither in 1541, the Columbus-
remains till recently at Havana being those
of his son Diego. The latter, under the

58 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1500

belief that . they were the father's, were
transferred to Genoa in 1887, and deposited
there on July 2d of that year with the
utmost ecclesiastical pomp.

As Columbus was ignorant of having
found a new continent, so was he denied
the honor of giving it a name, this falling
by accident, design, or carelessness of truth,
to Amerigo Vespucci, a native of Florence,
whose active years were spent in Spain and
Portugal. Vespucci made three voyages
into the western seas. In the second, 1501,
he visited the coast of Brazil, and pushed
farther south than any navigator had yet
done, probably so far as the island of South
Georgia, in latitude 54°. His account of
this voyage found its way into print in
1504, at Augsburg, Germany, the first pub
lished narrative of any discovery of the
mainland. Although, as above noted, it
was not the earliest discovery of the main,
it was widely regarded such, and caused
Vespucci to be named for many years as
the peer, if not the superior of Columbus.
The publication ran through many editions.

Amerigo VespuccC
Fac-simile of an old pSt

1507] COLUMBUS 61

That of Strassburg, 1505, mentioned Ves
pucci on its title-page as having discov
ered a new " Southern Land." This is
the earliest known utterance hinting at
the continental nature of the new discov
ery, as separate from Asia, an idea which
grew into a conviction only after Magel
lan's voyage, described in the next chapter.
In 1507 appeared at St. Die, near Strass
burg, a four-page pamphlet by one Lud,
secretary to the Duke of Lorraine, describ
ing Vespucci's voyages and speaking of
the Indians as the " American race." This
pamphlet came out the same year in an
other form, as part of a book entitled
" Introduction to Cosmography," prepared
by Martin Waldseemuller, under the nom de
plume of " Hylacomylus." In this book the
new " part of the world" is distinctly called
"THE LAND OF AMERICUS, OR AMERICA."
There is some evidence that Vespucci at
least connived at the misapprehension
which brought him his renown — as unde
served as it has become permanent — but
this cannot be regarded as proved.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY SPANISH AMERICA

As we have seen, Spain by no means
deserves the entire credit of bringing the
western continent to men's knowledge.
Columbus himself was an Italian. So was
Marco Polo, his inspirer, and also Tosca-
nelli, his instructor, by whose chart he
sailed his ever-memorable voyage. To Por
tugal as well Columbus was much indebted,
despite his rebuff there. Portugal then led
the world in the art of navigation and in
enthusiasm for discovery. Nor, probably,
would Columbus have asked her aid in
vain, had she not previously committed
herself to the enterprise of reaching India
eastward, a purpose brilliantly fulfilled
when, in 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the
Cape of Good Hope and sailed to Calicut,
on the coast of Malabar. Already before

Vasco da Gama.
Front an old print.

1498] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 65

this Spain and Portugal were rivals in the
search for new lands, and Pope Alexander
VI. had had to be appealed to, to fix their
fields. By his bull of May 3, 4, 1493, he
ordained as the separating line the merid
ian passing through a point one hundred
leagues west of the Azores, where Colum
bus had observed the needle of his compass
to point without deflection toward the north
star. Portugal objecting to this boundary
as excluding her from the longitude of the
newly found Indies, by the treaty of Tor-
desillas, June 7, 1494, the two powers, with
the Pope's assent, moved the line two
hundred and seventy leagues still farther
west. At this time neither party dreamed
of the complications destined subsequently
to arise in reference to the position of this
meridian on the other side of the globe.

The meridian of the Tordesillas conven
tion had been supposed still to give Spain
all the American discoveries likely to be
made, it being ascertained only later that
by it Portugal had obtained a considerable
part of the South American mainland.

VOL. I.— 5

66 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1506

Brazil, we know, was, till in 1822 it became
independent, a Portuguese dependency.
Spain, however, retained both groups of
the Antilles with the entire main about the
Gulf of Mexico, and became the earliest
great principality in the western world.

Before the death of Columbus, Spain had
taken firm possession of Cuba, Porto Rico,
and St. Domingo, and she stood ready to
seize any of the adjoining islands or lands
so soon as gold, pearls, or aught else of
value should be found there. Cruises of
discovery were made in every direction,
first, indeed, in Central and South America.

In 1506 cle Solis sailed along the eastern
coast of Yucatan. In 1513 the governor of
a colony on the Isthmus of Darien, Vasco
Nunez de Balboa, from the top of a lofty
mountain on the isthmus, saw what is now
called the Pacific Ocean. He designated it
the South Sea, a name which it habitually
bore till far into the eighteenth century.
From this time the exploration and settle
ment of the western coast, both up and
down, went on with little interruption, but

Balbo;

discovering the Pacific Ocean.

i5 is] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 69

this history, somewhat foreign to our theme,
we cannot detail.

The same year, 1513, Ponce de Leon, an
old Spanish soldier in the wars with the
Moors, a companion of Columbus in his
second voyage, and till now governor of

Ponce de Leon.

Porto Rico, began exploration to the north
ward. Leaving Porto Rico with three
ships, he landed on the coast of an un
known country, where he thought to find
not only infinite gold but also the much-
talked-about fountain of perpetual youth.

yo DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1518

His landing occurred on Easter Sunday, or
Pascna Florida, March 27, 1513, and so he
named the country Florida. The place was
a few miles north of the present town of
St. Augustine. Exploring the coast around
the southern extremity of the peninsula, he
sailed among a group of islands, which he
designated the Tortugas. Returning to
Porto Rico, he was appointed governor of
the new country. He made a second voy
age, was attacked by the natives and mor
tally wounded, and returned to Cuba to die.

Juan de Grijalva explored the south coast
of the Gulf of Mexico, from Yucatan toward
the Panuco. Interest attaches to this enter
prise mainly because the treasure which
Grijalva collected aroused the envy and
greed of the future conqueror of Mexico,
Hernanclo Cortez.

In 1518, Velasquez, governor of Cuba,
sends Cortez westward, with eleven ships
and over six hundred men, for the purpose
of exploration. He landed at Tabasco,
thence proceeded to the Island of San Juan
de Ulua, nearly opposite Vera Cruz, where

Hernando Cortes.
From an old print.

i5i8] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 73

he received messengers and gifts from the
Emperor Montezuma. Ordered to leave
the country, he destroyed his ships and
marched directly upon the capital. He
seized Montezuma and held him as a host
age for the peaceable conduct of his sub
jects. The Mexicans took up arms, only
to be defeated again and again by the
Spaniards. Montezuma became a vassal of
the Spanish crown, and covenanted to pay
annual tribute. Attempting to reconcile
his people to this agreement he was him
self assailed and wounded, and, refusing all
nourishment, soon after died. With re-
enforcements, Cortez completed the con
quest of the country, and Mexico became a
province of Spain.

Vasquez de Ayllon, one of the auditors
of the Island of Santo Domingo, sent two
ships from that island to the Bahamas for
Indians to be sold as slaves. Driven from
their course by the wind, they at length
reached the shore of South Carolina, at the
mouth of the Wateree River, which they
named the Jordan, calling the country

74 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1520

Chicora. Though kindly treated by the
natives, the ruthless adventurers carried
away some seventy of these. One ship
was lost, and most of the captives on the
others died during the voyage. Vasquez
was, by the Emperor Charles V., King of
Spain, made governor of this new province,
and again set sail to take possession. But
the natives, in revenge for the cruel treat
ment which they had previously received,
made a furious attack upon the invaders.
The few survivors of the slaughter returned
to Santo Domingo, and the expedition was
abandoned. These voyages were in 1520
and 1526.

In connection with the subject of Span
ish voyages, a passing notice should be
given to one, who, though not of Spanish
birth, yet did much to further the progress
of discovery on the part of his adopted
country. Magellan was a Portuguese navi
gator who had been a child when Colum
bus came back in triumph from the West
Indies. Refused consideration from King
Emmanuel, of Portugal, for a wound re-

Montezurm mortally wounded by his own subjects

i52o] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 77

ceived under his flag during the war
against Morocco, he renounced his native
land and offered his services to the saga
cious Charles V., of Spain, who gladly
accepted them. With a magnificent fleet,
Magellan, in 1519, set sail from Seville,
cherishing Columbus's bold purpose, which
no one had yet realized, of reaching the
East Indies by a westward voyage. After
touching at the Canaries, he explored the
coast of South America, passed through
the strait now called by his name, discov
ered the Laclrone Islands, and christened
the circumjacent ocean the Pacific.

The illustrious navigator now sailed for
the Philippine Islands, so named from
Philip, son of Charles V., who succeeded
that monarch as Philip II. By the Torde-
sillas division above described, the islands
were properly in the Portuguese hemi
sphere, but on the earliest maps, made by
Spaniards, they were placed twenty-five
degrees too far east, and this circumstance,
whether accidental or designed, has pre
served them to Spain even to the present

7 8 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1528

time. At the Philippine Islands Magellan
was killed in an affray with the natives.
One of his ships, the Victoria, after sailing
around the Cape of Good Hope, arrived in
Spain, having been the first to circumnavi
gate the globe. The voyage had taken
three years and twenty-eight days.

The disastrous failure of the expedition
of Vasquez de Ayllon to Florida did not
discourage attempts on the part of others
in the same direction. Velaspuez, governor
of Cuba, jealous of the success of Cortez in
Mexico, had sent Pamphilo de Narvaez to
arrest him. In this attempt Narvaez had
been defeated and taken prisoner. Unde
terred by this failure he had solicited and
received of Charles V. the position of gov
ernor over Florida, a territory at that time
embracing the whole southern part of what
is now the United States, and reaching
from Cape Sable to the Panuco, or River
of Palms, in Mexico. With three hundred
men he, in 1528, landed near Appalachee
Bay, and marched inland with the hope
of opening a country rich and populous.

Death of Magellan.

i53o] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 81

Bitterly was he disappointed. Swamps
and forests, wretched wigwams with their
squalid inmates everywhere met his view,
but no gold was to be found. Discour
aged, he and his followers returned to the
coast, where almost superhuman toil and

Ferdinand de Soto.

skill enabled them to build five boats, in
which they hoped to work westward to the
Spanish settlements. Embarking, they stole
cautiously along the coast for some dis
tance, but were at last driven by a storm
upon an island, perhaps Galveston, perhaps
Santa Rosa, where Narvaez and most of his

VOL. I.— 6

82 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1540

men perished. Four of his followers sur
vived to cross Texas to the Gulf of Cali
fornia and reach the town of San Miguel
on the west coast of Mexico. Here they
found their countrymen, searching as usual
for pearls, gold, and slaves, and by their
help they made a speedy return to Spain,
heroes of as remarkable an adventure as
history records. These unfortunates were
the first Europeans to visit New Mexico.
Their narrative led to the exploration of that
country by Coronado and others, and to the
discoveries of Cortez in Lower California.

Ferdinand de Soto, eager to rival the
exploits of Cortez in Mexico, and of his
former commander, Pizarro, in Peru, offered
to conquer Florida at his own expense.
Appointed governor-general of Florida and
of Cuba, he sailed with seven large and
three small vessels. From Espiritu Santo
Bay he, in 1539, niarched with six hundred
men into the country of the Appalachians
and discovered the harbor of Pensacola.
After wintering at Appalachee he set out
into the interior, said to abound in gold

1540] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 83

and silver. Penetrating northeasterly as
far as the Savannah, he found only copper
and mica. From here he marched first
northwest into northern central Georgia,
then southwest into Alabama. A battle
was fought with the natives at Mavila, or

A Palisaded Indian Town in Alabama.

Mobile, in which the Spaniards suffered
serious loss. Ships that he had ordered
arrived at Pensacola, but de Soto deter
mined not to embark until success should
have crowned his efforts. He turned back
into the interior, into the country of the
Chickasaws, marched diagonally over the

84 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1542

present State of Mississippi to its northwest
corner, and crossed the Mississippi River
near the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. From
this point the general direction of the Span
ish progress was southwest, through what
is now Arkansas, past the site of Little
Rock, till at last a river which seems to
have been the Washita was reached. Down
this stream de Soto and his decimated
force floated — two hundred and fifty of his
men had succumbed to the hardships and
perils of his march — arriving at the junc
tion of the Red with the Mississippi River
on Sunday, April 17, 1542. At this point
de Soto sickened and died, turning over the
command to Luis de Moscoso. Burying
their late leader's corpse at night deep in
the bosom of the great river, and construct
ing themselves boats, the survivors of this
ill-fated expedition, now reduced to three
hundred and seventy-two persons, made the
best of their way down the Mississippi to
the Gulf, and along its coast, finally reach
ing the Spanish town near the mouth oS the
Panuco in Mexico.

1562]

EARL Y SPANISH AMERICA

Thus no settlement had as yet been
made in Florida by the Spanish. The first
occupation destined to be permanent was
brought about through religious jealousy
inspired by the establishment of a French
Protestant (Huguenot) colony in the terri-

Burial of de Soto in the Mississippi at night.

tory. Ribault, a French captain commis
sioned by Charles IX., was put in command
of an expedition by that famous Huguenot,
Admiral Coligny, and landed on the coast
of Florida, at the mouth of the St. John's,
which he called the River of May. This

86

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1562

was in 1562. The name Carolina, which
that section still bears, was given to a fort
at Port Royal, or St. Helena. Ribault re
turned to France, where civil war was then
raging between the Catholics and the Prot
estants or Huguenots. His colony, waiting

a V-*~^
u- f <ft *-?^

Fort Carolina on the River of May.

for promised aid and foolishly making no
attempt to cultivate the soil, soon lan
guished. Dissensions arose, and an effort
was made to return home. Famine having
carried off the greater number, the colony
came to an end. In 1564 Coligny sent out
Laudonniere, who built another fort, also

1565] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 87

named Carolina, on the River of May.
Again misfortunes gathered thickly about
the settlers, when Ribault arrived bringing
supplies.

But Spain claimed this territory, and
Pedro Melendez a Spanish soldier, was in

Pedro Melendez.

1565 sent by Philip II. to conquer it from
the French, doubly detested as Protestants.
He landed in the harbor and at the mouth
of the river, to both of which he gave the
name St. Augustine. Melendez lost no
time in attacking Fort Carolina, which he
surprised, putting the garrison mercilessly

88 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1565

to the sword. The destruction of the
French colony was soon after avenged by
Dominic de Gourgues, who sailed from
France to punish the enemies of his coun
try. Having accomplished his purpose by
the slaughter of the Spanish garrison he
returned home, but the French Protestants
made no further effort to colonize Florida.

Spain claimed the land by right of dis
covery, but, although maintaining the feeble
settlement at St. Augustine, did next to
nothing after this to explore or civilize this
portion of America. The nation that had
sent out Columbus was not destined to be
permanently the great power of the New
World. The hap of first landing upon the
Antilles, and also the warm climate and
the peaceable nature of the aborigines, led
Spain to fix her settlements in latitudes
that were too low for the best health and
the greatest energy. Most of the settlers
were of a wretched class, criminals and
adventurers, and they soon mixed largely
with the natives. Spain herself greatly
lacked in vigor, partly from national causes,

Indians devoured by Vx
From an old print.

i5?o] EARLY SPANISH AMERICA 91

partly from those obscure general causes
which even to this day keep Latin Europe,
in military power and political accomplish
ments, inferior to Teutonic or Germanic
Europe.

Moreover, the Spaniards found their first
American conquests too easy, and the re
wards of these too great. This prevented
all thought of developing the country
through industry, concentrating expecta
tion solely upon waiting fortunes, to be
had from the natives by the sword or
through forced labor in mines. Their
treatment of the aborigines was nothing
short of diabolical. Well has it been
said : " The Spaniards had sown desola
tion, havoc, and misery in and around
their track. They had depopulated some
of the best peopled of the islands and re
newed them with victims deported from
others. They had inflicted upon him-
dreds of thousands of the natives all the
forms and agonies of fiendish cruelty, driv
ing them to self-starvation and suicide, as
a way of mercy and release from an utterly

92 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1570

wretched existence. They had come to be
viewed by their victims as fiends of hate,
malignity, and all dark and cruel despe
ration and mercilessness in passion. The
hell which they denounced upon their vic
tims was shorn of its worst terror by the
assurance that these tormentors were not
to be there. Las Casas, the noble mission
ary, the true soldier of the cross, and the
few priests and monks who sympathized
with him, in vain protested against these
cruelties."

To all these causes we must add the
narrow colonial policy of Spain. Imitat
ing Venice and ancient Carthage instead
of Greece, she held her dependencies under
the straitest servitude to herself as con
quered provinces, repressing all political
or commercial independence. A similar
restrictive policy, indeed, hampered the
colonies of other nations, but it was no
where else so irrational or blighting as in
Spanish America.

CHAPTER III.

EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION BY THE
FRENCH AND THE ENGLISH

How the French fought for foothold in
Florida and were routed by the Spaniards
has just been related. So early as 1504,
and possibly much earlier, before Cabot or
Columbus, French sailors were familiar with
the fisheries of Newfoundland. To the Isle
of Cape Breton they gave its name in re
membrance of their own Brittany. The
attention of the French Government was
thus early directed toward America, and it
at length determined to share in the new
discoveries along with the Spanish and the
English.

In 1524 Verrazano, a Florentine naviga
tor, was sent by Francis I. on a voyage of
discovery to the New World. Sighting
the shores of America near the present

94

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1534

Wilmington, North Carolina, he explored
the coast of New Jersey, touched land
near New York Bay, and anchored a few
days in the harbor of Newport. In this
vicinity he came upon an island, which was

Verrazano, the Florentine Navigator.

probably Block Island. Sailing from here
along the coast as far north as Newfound
land, he named this vast territory New
France.

In 1534 Cartier, a noted voyager of St.
Malo, coasted along the north of New-

Jacques Cartier.
From an

1540] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 97

foundland, passed through the Straits of
Belle Isle into the water now known as St.
Lawrence Gulf, and into the mouth of the
St. Lawrence River. Erecting a cross, he
took possession of the shores in the name
of the king of France.

In the following year he made a second
voyage, going up as far as the mouth of a
small river which the year before he had
named St. John's. He called the waters
the Bay of St. Lawrence. Ascending this,
he came to a settlement of the natives near
a certain hill, which he called Mont Royal,
now modified into " Montreal." Cartier
returned to France in 1536, only a few of
his men having survived the winter.

In 1540 Lord Roberval fitted out a fleet,
with Cartier as subordinate. Cartier sailed
at once — his third voyage — Roberval fol
lowing the next year. A fort was built
near the present site of Quebec. Roberval
and Cartier disagreed and returned to
France, leaving the real foundation of
Quebec to be laid by Champlain, much
later.

VOL. i. — 7

98 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1604

In 1604 De Monts arrived on the coast
of Nova Scotia and erected a fort at the
mouth of the St. Croix, New Brunswick.
He also made a settlement on the shore
of the present harbor of Annapolis, naming
it Port Royal, and the country around it
Acadia. De Monts is famous largely be
cause under him the Sieur de Champlain,
the real father of French colonization in
America, began his illustrious career. He
had entered the St. Lawrence in 1603. IR
1608 he founded Quebec, the first perma
nent colony of New France. The next
year he explored the lake which perpetu
ates his name. In 1615 he saw Lake
Huron, Le Caron, the Franciscan, preced
ing him in this only by a few days. Fired
with ardor for discovery, Champlain joined
the Hurons in an attack upon the Iroquois.
This led him into what is now New York
State, but whether the Indian camp first
attacked by him was on Onondaga or on
Canandaigua Lake is still in debate.
These were but the beginning of Cham-
plain's travels, by which many other

1497] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 99

Frenchmen, some as missionaries, some as
traders, were inspired to press far out into
the then unknown West. We shall resume
the narrative in Chapter VII. of the next
period. Champlain died at Quebec in

1635-

Turn back now to Columbus's time.

England, destined to dominate the conti
nent of North America, was also practically
the discoverer of the same. On St. John's
day, June 24, 1497, thirteen months and a
week before Columbus saw South America,
John Cabot, a Venetian in the service of
King Henry VII., from the deck of the
good ship Matthew, of Bristol, descried
land somewhere on the coast either of
Labrador or of Nova Scotia. Cabot, of
course, supposed this prima vista of his
to belong to Asia, and expected to reach
Cipango next voyage. So late as 1543
Jean Allefonsce, on reaching New Eng
land, took it for the border of Tartary.
Andre Thevet, in 1515, in a pretended voy
age to Maine, places Cape Breton on the
west coast of Asia. This confusion prob-

TOO DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1516

ably explains the tradition of Norumbega
as a great city, and of other populous and
wealthy cities in the newly found land.
Men transferred ideas of Eastern Asia to
this American shore.

The subsequent year Cabot made a
second voyage, inspecting the American
coast northward till icebergs were met,
southward to the vicinity of Albemarle
Sound. Possibly in his first expedition,
probably in the second, John Cabot was
accompanied by his more famous son,
Sebastian. For many years after the Cab-
ots, England made little effort to explore
the New World. Henry VII. was a Catho
lic. He therefore submitted to the Pope's
bull which gave America to Spain. Henry
VIII. had married Catherine of Aragon.
He allowed Ferdinand, her father, to em
ploy the skill and daring of Sebastian
Cabot in behalf of Spain. It was reserved
for the splendid reign of Elizabeth to
show what English courage and endurance
could accomplish in extending England's
power.

Sebastian Cabot. "
From an old print.

1576] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 103

Like those before him, Martin Frobisher
was in earnest to find the northwest pas
sage, in whose existence all navigators then
fully believed. Like Columbus, he vainly
sought friends to aid him. At last, after
he had waited fifteen years in vain, Dudley,
the Earl of Warwick, helped him to an out
fit. His little fleet embraced the Gabriel,
of thirty-five tons, the Michael of thirty,
and a pinnace of ten. As it swept to sea
past Greenwich, the Queen waved her hand
in token of good-will. Sailing northward
near the Shetland Isles, Frobisher passed
the southern shore of Greenland and came
in sight of Labrador, 1576.

He effected a landing at Hall's Island,
at the mouth of the bay now called by his
name, but which he thought to be a strait,
his discovery thus strengthening his belief
in the possibility of reaching Asia by this
westward course. He sailed up the bay as
far as Butcher's Island, where five of his
men were taken prisoners by the natives.
All effort to rescue them was made, but to
no purpose. Among the curiosities which

104 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1577

he brought home was a piece of stone,
or black ore, which gave rise to the belief
that gold was to be found in this new
country.

A second and larger expedition sailed in
1577. The Queen gave ,£1,000 and lent
the royal ship Aid, of two hundred tons.
The Gabriel and the Michael of the former
year were again made ready, besides smaller
craft. This voyage was to seek gold rather
than to discover the northwest passage.
The fleet set sail May 27th, and on July
1 8th arrived off North Foreland, or Hall's
Island, so named for the man who had
brought away the piece of black earth.
Search was made for this metal, supposed
to be so valuable, and large quantities
were found. The fleet sailed back to
England with a heavy cargo of it.

In 1578 a third and the last voyage
was made to this region, to which the
name meta incognita was given. Two large
ships were furnished by the Queen, and
these were accompanied by thirteen smaller
ones.

1578] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 105

It was now the purpose to found a colony.
The expedition set sail May 3ist, going
through the English Channel, and reaching
the coast of Greenland June 2ist. Fro-
bisher and a few of his sailors landed where,
perhaps, white men had never trodden be
fore. As he came near the bay he was
driven south by stormy weather, and en
tered, not knowing his whereabouts, the
waters of Hudson's Straits, which he trav
ersed a distance of sixty miles. He suc
ceeded at length in retracing his course,
and anchored on the southern shore of Fro-
bisher's Bay, in the Countess of Warwick's
Sound. But the desire for gold, the bleak
winds, barren shores, and drifting icebergs,
all combined to dispel the hopes of making
a successful settlement, and the adventurers
turned their faces homeward, carrying once
more a cargo of ore, which proved, like the
first, to be of no value whatever.

Almost three hundred years later Captain
Hall, the American explorer, visited the
Countess's Island and Sound. Among the
Eskimos, from 1860 to 1862, he learned

io6

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1578

An Indian Village at the Roanoke Settlement.

the tradition of Frobisher's visits, which
had been preserved and handed down.
They knew the number of ships ; they
spoke of the three times that white men

1578] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 107

had come ; how five of these strangers had
been taken captive, and how, after remain
ing through the winter, they had been
allowed to build a boat, and to launch
themselves upon the icy seas, never to be
heard of more. Captain Hall was shown
many relics of Frobisher's voyages, some of
which he sent to the Royal Geographical
Society of London, a part to the Smith
sonian Institute at Washington. The small
English house of lime and stone on this
island was still standing in good condition,
and there was also a trench where they had
built their ill-fated boat.

A contemporary of Frobisher, Sir Francis
Drake, also entertained the idea of making
the northwest passage. While engaged in
privateering or piratical expeditions against
the Spanish, Drake landed on the Isthmus
of Panama, saw the Pacific for the first
time, and determined to enter it by the
Straits of Magellan. In 1577 he made his
way through the straits, plundered the
Spanish along the coast of Chili and Peru,
and sailed as far north as the 48th parallel,

1 08 DISCO VER Y AND SETTLEMENT [i 580

or Oregon, calling the country New Albion.
Steering homeward by the Cape of Good
Hope, he arrived at Plymouth, his starting-
point, in 1580, having been absent about
two years and ten months.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

Thomas Cavendish had been with Gren-
ville in the voyage of 1585 to Virginia.
Frobisher's attempts inspired him with the
ambition of the age. In 1586 he, too, sailed
through the Straits of Magellan, burning
and plundering Spanish ships, rounded the

Sir Wa'ter Raleigh.
From an old print.

1584] ENGLISH AND FRENCH in

Cape of Good Hope, and reached Plymouth
in 1588, having been gone about two years
and fifty days.

These half-piratical attempts against Spain
led continually into American waters, till
the notion of forming a permanent outpost
here as base for such adventures suggested
to Sir Humphrey Gilbert the plan, which he
failed to realize, of founding an American
settlement. Gilbert visited our shores in
1579, and again in 1583, but was lost on
his return from the latter voyage.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh sent two cap
tains, Amidas and Barlow, to inspect the
coast off what is now North Carolina.
They reported so favorably that he began,
next year, a colony on Roanoke Island.
England was now a Protestant land, and no
longer heeded Spanish claims to the trans
atlantic continent, save so far as actual
settlements had been made.

Sir Richard Grenville commanded this
expedition, but was to return on seeing the
one hundred and eight colonists who ac
companied him well established. Queen

ii2 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1586

Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the
new country. Drake, tending homeward
from one of his raids on the Spanish coast,

Queen Elizabeth.

in 1586, offered the settlers supplies, but
finding them wholly discouraged, he carried
them back to England.

1587] ENGLISH AND FRENCH 113

Determined to plant an agricultural com
munity, Raleigh next time, 1587, sent men
with their families. A daughter to one of
these, named Dare, was the first child of
English parents born in America. Becom
ing destitute, the colony despatched its
governor home for supplies. He returned
to find the settlement deserted, and no tid
ings as to the fate of the poor colonists
have ever been heard from that day to our
own. The Jamestown settlers mentioned
in the next chapter found among their In
dian neighbors a boy whose whitish com
plexion and wavy hair induced the interest
ing suspicion that he was descended from
some one of these lost colonists of Roanoke.

Thus Sir Walter's enterprise had to be
abandoned. In the ,£40,000 spent upon it
his means were exhausted. Besides, Eng
land was now at war with Spain, and the
entire energies of the nation were in requi
sition for the overthrow of the Spanish
Armada.

VOL. I. — i

CHAPTER IV.

THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

WE have now arrived at the seventeenth
century. In 1606 King James I. issued the
first English colonial charter. It created a
first and a second Virginia Company, the
one having its centre in London, and com
ing to be known as the London Company ;
the other made up of Bristol, Exeter, and
Plymouth men, and gradually taking the
title of the Plymouth Company. This
latter company, the second, or Plymouth
Company, authorized to plant between 38°
and 45° north, effected a settlement in 1607
at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Little
came of it but suffering, the colonists, after
a severe winter, returning to England.

A colony of one hundred and five plant
ers sent out by the first or London Com
pany, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesa-

King James I.
Mr. Henry Irving's Collection.

i6o?] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 117

peake Bay, entering James River, to which
they indeed gave this name, and planted
upon its banks Jamestown, the first perma
nent English colony on the continent.
This London Company consisted of a coun
cil in England, appointed by the king,
having the power to name the members of
a local council which was to govern the
colony, the colonists themselves having no
voice.

It is well known that the very earliest
population of the Old Dominion was not
of the highest, but predominantly idle and
thriftless. Vagabonds and homeless chil
dren picked up in the streets of London, as
well as some convicts, were sent to the
colony from England to be indented as ser
vants, permanently, or for a term of years.
Persons of the better class, to be sure, came
as well, and the quality of the population,
on the whole, improved year by year. Set
tlement here followed a centrifugal tend
ency, except as this was repressed by fear
of the Indians. In 1616 the departments
of Virginia were Henrico, up the James

ii8 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1608

above the Appomattox mouth, West and
Shirley Hundreds, Jamestown, Kiquoton,
and King's Gift on the coast near Cape
Charles — a wide reach of territory to be
covered by a total population of only three
hundred and fifty.

A little exporting was immediately begun.
So early as May 20, 1608, Jamestown sent
to England a ship laden with iron ore,
sassafras, cedar posts, and walnut boards.
Another followed on June 2d, with a cargo
all of cedar wood. This year or the next,
small quantities of pitch, tar, and glass
were sent. From 1619 tobacco was so com
mon as to be the currency. About 1650 it
was largely exported, a million and a half
pounds, on the average, yearly. The figure
had risen to twelve million pounds by 1670.
At the middle of the century, corn, wheat,
rice, hemp, flax, and fifteen varieties of
fruit, as well as excellent wine were pro
duced. A wind-mill was set up about 1620,
the first in America. It stood at Falling
Creek on the James River. The pioneer
iron works on the continent were in this

i6o8] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 119

colony, hailing from about the date last
named. Community of property prevailed
at Jamestown in all the earliest years, as
it did at Plymouth. After the event
noted by
John Rolfe :
"about the
last of Au
gust [1619]
came in a
Dutch man
of warre that
sold us twen
ty Negars,"
slavery was
a continual
and increas
ing curse, as
is attested
by the laws
concerning slaves. It encouraged indolence
and savagery of habit and nature. Virgin
ian slaves, however, were better treated than
those farther south. They were tolerably
clothed, fed, and housed.

Tobacco Plant.

120 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1608

There was in Virginia little of that health
ful social and political contact which did so
much to develop civilization at the North.
Of town life there was practically nothing.
Even so late as 1716 Jamestown had only
a sorry half-dozen structures, two of which

Captain John Smith.

were church and court-house. Fifteen years
later Fredericksburg had, besides the manor
house of Colonel Willis and its belongings,
only a store, a tailor shop, a blacksmith
shop, a tavern or ''ordinary," and a coffee
house. Richmond and Petersburg still ex
isted only on paper, and if we come down

1608] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 121

to the middle of the eighteenth century,
Williamsburg, the capital of the province,
was nothing but a straggling village of two
hundred houses, without a single paved
street. Only the College and the gov
ernor's " palace " were of brick. The
county-seats were mostly mere glades in
the woods, containing each its court-house,
prison, whipping-post, pillory, and ducking-
stool, besides the wretched tavern where
court and attendants put up, and possibly a
church. Hardships and dissensions marked
the whole early history of this infant state.
At one time only forty settlers remained
alive, at another meal and water were
the sole diet. Hoping for instant riches
in gold, poor gentlemen and vagabonds
had come, too much to the exclusion of
mechanics and laborers. For relief from
the turbulence and external dangers of
this period, the colony owed much to Cap
tain John Smith, who, after ail allowance
for his boasting, certainly displayed great
courage and energy in emergencies. He,
too, it was who did most to explore the

122 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1609

Kuy Towhatan. cormmdf C:&ntik to le ^fla

his thankjiillne/s
and /iaw ht Subitcled 3.9 of their kinys read£$ /iiftory

Pocahontas saving Captain Smith's Life.
From Smithes '' General History?"1

country up the James and upon Chesapeake
Bay.

A new charter was granted in 1609, tne

i6io] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 123

council in England being now appointed by
the stockholders instead of the king, and
the governor of the colony being named by
this council. Lord Delaware was made
Governor and Captain-General of Virginia,
and many more colonists sent out. By a
wreck of two of the vessels there was delay
in the arrival of the newly chosen officers.
vSmith, then Percy, meantime continued to
exercise authority. This, again, was a
critical period. Indians were troublesome.
Tillage having been neglected from the
first, provisions became exhausted, and a
crisis long referred to as "the starving
time " ensued. The colony had actually
abandoned Jamestown and shipped for Eng
land, when met in James River by Lord
Delaware, coming with relief. They at
once returned, and an era of hope dawned.
This was in June, 1610. One hundred and
fifty new settlers accompanied Delaware.
Planting was vigorously prosecuted, the
Indians placated, and still further acces
sions of people and cattle secured from
England.

124 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1612

Delaware's brief, mild sway was always a
benediction, in pleasing contrast with the
severities of Dale and Argall, who succes
sively governed after his departure. Under
Dale, death was the penalty for slaughtering
cattle, even one's own, except with the
Governor's leave, also of exporting goods
without permission. A baker giving short
weight was to lose his ears, and on second
repetition to suffer death. A laundress
purloining linen was to be flogged. Martial
law alone prevailed ; even capital punish
ment was ordained without jury. Such ar
bitrary rule was perhaps necessary, so law
less were the mass of the population. It at
any rate had the excellent effect of rousing
the Virginians to political thought and to
the assertion of their rights. In 1612 a
change took place in the Company's methods
of governing its colony. The superior coun
cil was abolished, its authority transferred
to the corporation as a whole, which met as
an assembly to elect officers and enact laws
for the colony. The government thus be
came more democratic in form and spirit.

1614]

THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

125

The year 1614 was distinguished by the
marriage of Pocahontas, daughter of the
native chief Powhatan, to the English colo-

^POWHATAN

&U& tkhjtate &Ljfy7uon -urfan Copt Smith
,-was dftiusncfto Mmj)rj/bner
iffo?

The Council of Powhatan.
From Smithes " General History?

nist Rolfe. With him she visited England,
dying there a few years later. The alliance
secured the valuable friendship of Pow-

126 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1619

hatan and his subjects — only till Powhatan's
death, however. Thenceforth savage hos
tilities occurred at frequent intervals. In
1622 they were peculiarly severe, over three
hundred settlers losing their lives through
them. Another outbreak took place about
1650, this time more quickly suppressed.
We shall see in a later chapter how Ba
con's Rebellion was occasioned by Indian
troubles.

As James I. broke with Parliament, a ma
jority of the Virginia shareholders proved
Liberals, and they wrought with signal
purpose and effect to realize their ideas in
their colony. To this political complexion
of the Virginia Company not only Virginia
itself, but, in a way, all America is indebted
for a start toward free institutions. During
the governorship of George Yeardley, was
summoned an assembly of burgesses, con
sisting of two representatives, elected by
the inhabitants, from each of the eleven
boroughs or districts which the colony had
by this time come to embrace. It met on
June 30, 1619, the earliest legislative body

i622] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 127

in the New World. This was the dawn of
another new era in the colony's history.

In 1622 arrived Sir Thomas Wyatt, bring
ing a written constitution from the Com-

Pocahontas.

pany, which confirmed to the colony repre
sentative government and trial by jury.
The assembly was given authority to make
laws, subject only to the Governor's veto.
This enlargement of political rights was due

128 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1625

to the growth of the sentiment of popular
liberty in England. In the meetings of
the London Company debates were frequent
and spirited between the court faction and
the supporters of the political rights of the
colonists. James I., dissatisfied with the
authority which he had himself granted,
appointed a commission to inquire into the
Company's management, and also into the
circumstances of the colony. A change was
recommended, the courts decided as the
king wished, and the Company was dis
solved. The colony, while still allowed to
govern itself by means of its popular assem
bly, was thus brought directly under the
supervision of the Crown. Charles I., com
ing to the throne in 1625, gave heed to the
affairs of the colony only so far as necessary
to secure for himself the profits of the
tobacco trade. It was doubtless owing to
his indifference that the colony continued
to enjoy civil freedom. He again appointed
Yeardley Governor, a choice agreeable to
the people ; and in 1628, by asking that the
assembly be called in order to vote him a

1642] THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA 129

monopoly of the coveted trade, he explicitly
recognized the legitimacy and authority of
that body.

Yeardley was succeeded by Harvey, who
rendered himself unpopular by defending in
all land disputes the claims arising under
royal grant against those based upon occu
pancy. Difficulties of this sort pervaded
all colonial history.

In 1639 Wyatt held the office, succeeded
in 1642 by Berkeley, during whose adminis
tration the colony attained its highest pros
perity. Virginians now possessed constitu
tional rights and privileges in even a higher
degree than Englishmen in the northern
colonies. The colonists were most loyal to
the king, and were let alone. They were
also attached to the Church of England,
ever manifesting toward those of a different
faith the spirit of intolerance characteristic
of the age.

During the civil war in England, Vir
ginia, of course, sided with the king. When
Cromwell had assumed the reins of govern
ment he sent an expedition to require the

VOL. I.-

130 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1650

submission of the colony. An agreement
was made by which the authority of Parlia
ment was acknowledged, while the colony
in return was left unmolested in the man
agement of its own affairs.

Signature of Berkeley.

CHAPTER V.

PILGRIM AND PURITAN AT THE NORTH

THE Pilgrims who settled New England
were Independents, peculiar in their eccle
siastical tenet that the single congregation
of godly persons, ho\ ever few or humble,
regularly organized for Christ's work, is of
right, by divine appointment, the highest
ecclesiastical authority on earth. A church
of this order existed in London by 1568;
another, possibly more than one, the
" Brownists," by 1580. Barrowe and Green
wood began a third in 1588, which, its
founders being executed, went exiled to
Amsterdam in 1593, subsequently unit
ing with the Presbyterians there. These
churches, though independent, were not
strictly democratic, like those next to be
named.

Soon after 1600 John Smyth gathered a

I32

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1612

church at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire,
England, which persecution likewise drove
to Amsterdam. Here Smyth seceded and
founded a Baptist church, which, returning
to London in 1611 or 1612, became the first
church of its kind known to have existed in

i «

Plymouth Harbor, England.

England. From Smyth's church at Gains
borough sprang one at Scrooby, in Notting
hamshire, and this, too, exiled like its
parent, crossed to Holland, finding home in
Leyden in 1607 and 1608. Of this church
John Robinson was pastor, and from its

1620] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 133

bosom came the Plymouth Colony to New
England.

This little band set out for America with
a patent from the Virginia Company, ac
cording to James I.'s charter of 1606, but
actually began here as labor-share holders

Harbor of Provincetown, Cape Cod, where the Pilgrims landed.

in a sub-corporation of a new organization,
the Plymouth Company, chartered in 1620.
Launching in the Mayflower from Plym
outh, where they had paused in their way
hither from Holland, they arrived off the
coast of Cape Cod in 1620, December nth
Old Style, December 2ist New Style, and

134 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1620

began a settlement, to which they gave the
name Plymouth. Before landing they had

formed themselves into a political body, a
government of the people with "just and
equal laws."

1620] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 135

They based their civil authority upon
this Mayflower compact, practically ignor
ing England. Carver was the first gov
ernor, Bradford the second. The colony
was named Plymouth in memory of hospi
talities which its members had received at
Plymouth, England, the name having no
connection with the "Plymouth" of the
Plymouth Company. The members of the
Plymouth Company had none but a mer
cantile interest in the adventure, merely
fitting out the colonists and bearing the ex
pense of the passage for all but the first.
On the other hand, the stock was not all
retained in England. Shares were allotted
to the Pilgrims as well, one to each emi
grant with or without means, and one for
every ^10 invested.

Plymouth early made a treaty with Mas-
sasoit, the chief of the neighboring Wam-
panoags, the peace lasting with benign
effects to both parties for fifty years, or till
the outbreak of Philip's War, discussed in a
later chapter. The first winter in Plymouth
was one of dreadful hardships, of famine,

i36

DISCO VER Y AND SETTLEMENT [1620

disease and death, which spring relieved
but in part. Yet Plymouth grew, surely if
slowly. It acquired rights on the Kenne-

bec, on the Connecticut, at Cape Ann. It
was at first a pure democracy, its laws all
made in mass-meetings of the entire body

1626]

PILGRIM AND PURITAN

137

of male inhabitants; nor was it till 1639
that increase of numbers forced resort to
the principle of representation. In 1643
the population was about three thousand.
Between 1620 and 1630 there were iso
lated settlers along the whole New England
coast. White, a minister from Dorchester,
England, founded a colony near Cape Ann,
which removed to Salem in 1626. The
Plymouth Company granted them a patent,
which Endicott, in charge of more emi-

Site of First Church and Governor Bradford's House at Plymouth.

138 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1629

grants, brought over in 1628. It gave title
to all land between the Merrimac and
Charles Rivers, also to all within three
miles beyond each. These men formed the
nucleus of the colony to which in 1629
Charles I. granted a royal charter, styling
the proprietors " the Governor and Com
pany of the Massachusetts Bay in New
England." Boston was made the capital.
Soon more emigrants came, and Charles-
town was settled.

It was a momentous step when the gov
ernment of this colony was transferred to
New England. Winthrop was chosen Gov
ernor, others of the Company elected to
minor offices, and they, with no fewer than
one thousand new colonists, sailed for this
side the Atlantic. In Massachusetts, there
fore, a trading company did not beget, as
elsewhere, but literally became a political
state. Many of the Massachusetts men,
in contrast with those of Plymouth, had
enjoyed high consideration at home. Yet
democracy prevailed here too. The Gover
nor and his eighteen assistants were chosen

1630] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 139

by the freemen, and were both legislature
and court. As population increased and
scattered in towns, these chose deputies to
represent them, and a lower house element
was added to the General Court, though

Governor Winthrop.

assistants and deputies did not sit sepa
rately till 1644. At this time Massachu
setts had a population of about 15,000. To
all New England 21,200 emigrants came
between 1628 and 1643, the total white

140

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1631

population at the latter date being about
24,000.

So early as 1631 this colony decreed to
admit none as freemen who were not also
church members. Thus Church and State
were made one, the government a theoc-

-:

4 1:*^

First Church in Sale

racy. The Massachusetts settlers, though
in many things less extreme than the Pil
grims, were decided Puritans, sincere but
formal, precise, narrow, and very super
stitious. They did not, however, on com
ing hither, affect or wish to separate from

I63i]

PILGRIM AND PURITAN

141

the Church of England, earnestly as they
deprecated retaining the sign of the cross
in baptism, the surplice, marriage with ring,
and kneeling at communion. Yet soon
they in effect became
Separatists as well as
Puritans, building inde
pendent churches, like
those at Plymouth, and
repudiating episcopacy
utterly.

Much as these Puri
tans professed and tried
to exalt reason in cer
tain matters, in civil
and religious affairs, where they took the
Old Testament as affording literal and
minute directions for all sorts of human
actions for all time, they could allow little
liberty of opinion. This was apparent
when into this theocratic state came Roger
Williams, afterward the founder of Rhode
Island. Born in London, England, about
1607, °f good family, he was placed by his
patron, Coke, at the Charter House School.

Seal of Massachusetts Bay
Company.

142 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1635

From there he went to Pembroke College,
Cambridge. In 1631 he arrived in Boston.
Somewhat finical in his political, moral, and
religious ideas, he found it impossible, hav
ing separated from the Church of England,
in which he had been reared, to harmonize
here with those still favoring that com
munion. At Salem he was invited by a
little company of Separatists to become
their teacher. His views soon offended the
authorities. He declared that the king's
patent could confer no title to lands pos
sessed by Indians. He denied the right of
magistrates to punish heresy, or to enforce
attendance upon religious services. " The
magistrate's power," he said, " extends only
to the bodies, goods, and outward state of
men."

Alarmed at his bold utterances, the Gen
eral Court of Massachusetts, September 2,
1635, decreed his banishment for "new and
dangerous opinions, against the authority of
magistrates." His fate was not, therefore,
merely because of his religious views. The
exile sought refuge at Seekonk, but this

1635]

PILGRIM AND PURITAN

being within the Plymouth jurisdiction, he,
on Governor Winslow's admonition, moved
farther into the wilderness, settling at Prov
idence. He purchased land of the natives,
and, joined by others, set up a pure democ
racy, instituting as a part thereof the " lively
experiment," for which ages had waited, of

Roger Williams' House at Salem.

perfect liberty in matters of religious belief.
Not for the first time in history, but more
clearly, earnestly, and consistently than it
had ever been done before, he maintained
for every man the right of absolute freedom
in matters of conscience, for all forms of
faith equal toleration.

Some friends of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson

144 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1638

established a colony on Aquidneck, the
Indian name for Rhode Island. Williams
went to England and secured from Parlia
ment a patent which united that plantation
with his in one government. Charles II.'s
charter of 1663 added Warwick to the first
two settlements, renewing and enlarging the

Edward Winslow.

patent, and giving freest scope for govern
ment according to Williams' ideas. Mrs.
Hutchinson, a woman of rare intellect and
eloquence, who maintained the right of pri
vate judgment and pretended to an infal
lible inner light of revelation, was, like
Williams, a victim of Puritan intolerance.

1633] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 145

She and her followers were banished, and
some of them, returning, put to death, 1659-
60. She came to Providence, then went to
Aquidneck, where her husband died in 1642.
She next settled near Hurl Gate, within the
Dutch limits, where herself and almost her
entire family were butchered by the Indians
in 1643.

In 1633 the Dutch erected a fort where
Hartford now is, but some English emi
grants from Plymouth Colony, in defiance
of a threatened cannonade, sailed past and
built a trading-house at Windsor, where,
joined by colonists, from about Boston, they
soon effected a settlement. Wethersfield and
Hartford were presently founded. In 1630
the Plymouth Company had granted Con
necticut to the Earl of Warwick, who turned
it over to Lord Brooke, Lord Say-and-Seal,
and others. Winthrop the Younger, son
of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts,
commissioned by these last, built a fort at
Saybrook. Till the expiration of his com
mission the towns immediately upon the
Connecticut were under the government of

VOL. I. — IO

146 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1638

Massachusetts. Their population in 1643
was three thousand. A convention of these
towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639,
and formed a constitution, like that of Mas
sachusetts Bay, thoroughly republican in
nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit
than either Massachusetts or New Haven,
being in this respect the peer of Plymouth.
At Hartford Roger Williams was always
welcome.

Meantime, in 1638, having touched at
Boston the year before, Davenport, Eaton,
and others from London began planting
at New Haven. The Bible was adopted
as their guide in both civil and religious
affairs, and a government organized in
which only church members could vote or
be elected to the General Court. Trre
colony flourished, branching out into sev
eral towns. In 1643 it numbered twenty-
five hundred inhabitants.

As early as 1622, Mason and Gorges
were granted land partly in what is now
Maine, partly in what is now New Hamp
shire ; and in 1623 Dover and Portsmouth

i626] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 147

were settled. Wheelwright, a brother-in-
law of Mrs. Hutchinson, with others, pur
chased of the natives the southeast part of
New Hampshire, between the Merrimac
and the Piscataqua, and in 1638 Exeter was
founded. In the same year with Wheel
wright's purchase, Mason obtained from
the council of the Plymouth Company a
patent to this same section, and the tract
was called New Hampshire. These con
flicting claims paved the way for future
controversies and lawsuits. The settlers
here were not Puritans, nor were they
obliged to be church members in order to
be deputies or freemen.

The settlement of Maine goes back to
1626, when the Plymouth Company granted
lands there both to Alexander and to
Gorges. In 1639 Gorges secured a royal
charter to re-enforce his claim. Large
freedom, civil and religious, was allowed.
For many years the Maine settlements
were small and scattered, made up mostly
of such as came to hunt and fish for a
season only.

148 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1650

From 1643 to 1684 Massachusetts,
Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven
formed a confederation under the style of
the United Colonies of New England.
Maine, Providence, and Rhode Island
sought membership, but were refused as
being civilly and religiously out of harmony
with the colonies named. Connecticut,
offensive to the Dutch, and exposed to
hostilities from them, was the most earnest
for the union, while at the same time the
most conservative as to its form. It was
a loose league, leaving each colony inde
pendent save as to war and peace, Indian
affairs, alliances and boundaries. Ques
tions pertaining to these were to be settled
by a commission of two delegates from each
of the four colonies, meeting yearly, voting
man by man, six out of the eight votes
being necessary to bind.

The confederacy settled a boundary dis
pute between New Haven and New Nether-
land in 1650. It received and disbursed
moneys, amounting some years to ,£600,
for the propagation of the gospel in New

1650] PILGRIM AND PURITAN 149

England, sent over by the society which
Parliament incorporated for that purpose
in 1649. It was also °f more or less ser
vice in securing united action against the
savages in Philip's War. The union was,
however, of little immediate service, useful
rather as an example for the far future. Its
failure was due partly to the distance of the
colonies apart, and to the strength of the
instinct for local self-government, a distin
guishing political trait of New England till
our day. Its main weakness, however, was
the overbearing power and manner of Mas
sachusetts, especially after her assumption
of Maine in 1652. In 1653 the Plymouth,
New Haven, and Connecticut commissioners
earnestly wished war with New Netherland,
but Massachusetts proudly forbade — a plain
violation of the articles. After this there
was not much heart in the alliance. The
last meeting of the commissioners occurred
at Hartford, September 5, 1684.

CHAPTER VI.

BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND

THE very year that witnessed the land
ing of the Pilgrims records the beginning
of another attempt to colonize the New
World. While Secretary of State, having
been appointed in 1619, Sir George Calvert,
a member of the Virginia Company* from
1609 until its dissolution in 1624, deter
mined to plant a colony for himself. In the
memorable year 1620 he bought of Lord

V a u gh a n
the patent
to the south

eastern pe
ninsula of
Newfound
land, the
next he sent colonists thither with a gener
ous supply of money for their support. In

Maryland Shilling.

1630] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 151

1623 King James gave him a patent, making
him proprietary of this region. In 1625
Calvert boldly declared himself a Catholic,
and resigned his office of Secretary. Spite
of this he was soon afterwards ennobled, and
his new title of Lord Baltimore is the name
by which he is best known. Visiting his little
settlement in 1627 he quickly came to the
conclusion that the severity of the climate
would make its failure certain. He there
fore gave up this enterprise, but determined
to repeat the attempt on the more favorable
soil of Virginia. Confident of the good
will of Charles I., to whom he had written
for a grant of land there, he did not await
a reply, but sailed for Virginia, where he
arrived in 1629. In 1632 the king issued a
patent granting to Baltimore and his heirs
a territory north and east of the Potomac,
comprising what we now call Maryland, all
Delaware, and a part of Pennsylvania. The
name Maryland was given it by the king in
honor of his queen, Henrietta Maria. But
before this charter had received royal signa
ture Lord Baltimore had breathed his last,

152 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1630

and his son Cecil succeeded to his honors
and possessions.

The Maryland charter made the proprie
tary the absolute lord of the soil. He was
merely to acknowledge fealty by the deliv
ery of two Indian arrows yearly to the king
at Windsor. He could make laws with the

Henrietta Maria.

consent of the citizens, declare war or
peace, appoint officers of government ; in
fact, in most respects he had regal power.
The colonists were, however, to remain
English subjects, with all the privileges
of such. If they were not represented
in Parliament, neither were they taxed by

1634] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 153

the Crown. If the proprietary made laws
for them, these must not be contrary to the
laws of England. And they were to enjoy
freedom of trade, not only with England
but with foreign countries.

This charter, as will be readily seen,
could not please the Virginians, since the
entire territory conveyed by it was part of
the grant of 1609 to the London Company
for Virginia. But as this and subsequent
charters had been annulled in 1624, the new
colony was held by the Privy Council to
have the law on its side, and Lord Balti
more was left to make his preparations
undisturbed. He fitted out two vessels, the
Ark and the Dove, and sent them on their
voyage of colonization. They went by the
way of the West Indies, arriving off Point
Comfort in 1634. Sailing up the Potomac,
they landed on the island of St. Clement's,
and took formal possession of their new
home. Calvert explored a river, now called
the St. Mary's, a tributary of the Potomac,
and being pleased with the spot began a
settlement. He gained the friendship of

154 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1634

the natives by purchasing the land and by
treating them justly and humanely.

The proprietary was a Catholic, yet.
whether or not by an agreement between

Supposed Portrait of William Clayborne.

him and the king, as Gardiner supposes, did
not use either his influence or his authority
to distress adherents of the Church of Eng
land. The two creeds stood practically

i635] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 155

upon an equality. But if religious troubles
were avoided, difficulties of another sort
were not slow in arising. About the year
1631, Clayborne, who had been secretary
of the Virginia colony, had chosen Kent
Island in Chesapeake Bay as a station for

Clayborne's Trading Post on Kent Island.

trading with the Indians. This post was in
the very midst of Maryland, and Calvert
notified Clayborne that he should consider
it a part of that province. Clayborne at
once showed himself a bitter enemy. The
Indians became suspicious and unfriendly,
Clayborne, so it was believed, being the

156 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1638

instigator of this temper. An armed vessel
was sent out, with orders from Clayborne to
seize ships of the St. Mary's settlement. A
fight took place, Clayborne fleeing to Vir
ginia. Calvert demanded that he should

o

be given up. This was refused, and in 1637
he went to England. A committee of the
Privy Council decided that Kent Island
belonged to Maryland.

In 1635 the first Maryland assembly met,
consisting of the freemen of the colony and
the governor, Leonard Calvert, the propri
etary's brother, who was presiding officer.
Lord Baltimore repudiated its acts, on the
ground that they were not proposed by him,
as the charter directed. The assembly
which gathered in 1638 retaliated, rejecting
the laws brought forward by the proprietary.

For a time the colony was without laws
except the common law of England. But
Baltimore was too wise and conciliatory to
allow such a state of affairs to continue.
He gave authority to the governor to
assent to the acts of the assembly, which
he himself might or might not confirm.

1639] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 157

Accordingly in 1639 the assembly met and
passed various acts, mostly relating to civil

ill i

i V \

affairs. One, however, was specially note
worthy, as giving to the "Holy Church"
" her rights and liberties," meaning by this

158 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1646

the Church of Rome, for, as Gardiner says,
the title was never applied to the Church of
England. It was at the same time expressly
enacted that all the Christian inhabitants
should be in the enjoyment of every right
and privilege as free as the natural-born
subjects of England. If Roger Williams
was the first to proclaim absolute religious
liberty, Lord Baltimore was hardly behind
him in putting this into practice. As has
been neatly said, " The Ark and the Dove
were names of happy omen : the one saved
from the general wreck the germs of politi
cal liberty, and the other bore the olive-
branch of religious peace."

During the civil war in England the
affairs of Maryland were in a very disturbed
condition. Clayborne, Maryland's evil gen
ius, seized the opportunity to foment an
insurrection, possessed himself once more
of Kent Island, and compelled the governor
to flee to Virginia. Returning in 1646,
Calvert was fortunate enough to recover
the reins of government, but the following
year witnessed the close of his administra-

1650] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 159

tion and his short though useful and event
ful life. Few men intrusted with almost
absolute authority have exercised it with so
much firmness and at the same time with so
much ability, discretion, and uprightness.

His successor, Greene, a Catholic, was
not likely to find favor with the Puritan
Parliament of England, and Baltimore, in
1648, to conciliate the ruling powers and to
refute the charge that Maryland was only a
retreat for Romanists, removed the governor
and appointed instead one who was a Prot
estant and a firm supporter of Parliament.
The council was also changed so as to place
the Catholics in the minority. The oath
of the new governor restrained him from
molesting any person, especially if of the
Roman Catholic persuasion, on account of
religious profession. The way was thus
opened for the Act of Toleration passed
in 1649. This law, after specifying certain
speeches against the Trinity, the Virgin, or
the saints as punishable offences, declared
that equal privileges should be enjoyed by
Christians of all creeds. Whatever the mo-

160 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1650

tives of Baltimore, his policy was certainly
wise and commendable.

A new and troublesome element was now
introduced into the colony. Some Puritans
who had not been tolerated among the
stanch Church-of-England inhabitants of
Virginia were invited by Governor Stone to
Maryland. Their home here, which they
named Providence, is now known as Annap
olis. The new-comers objected to the oath
of fidelity, refused to send burgesses to the
assembly, and were ready to overthrow the
government whose protection they were en
joying. Opportunity soon offered. Parlia
ment had already in 1652 brought Virginia
to submission. Maryland was now accused
of disloyalty, and when we notice among
the commissioners appointed by the Council
of State, the name of Clayborne, it is not
difficult to understand who was the author
of this charge. The governor was re
moved, but being popular and not averse to
compromise, was quickly restored. Then
came the accession of Cromwell to power as
Protector of England. Parliament was dis-

1650] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 161

solved. The authority of its commissioners
of course ceased. Baltimore seized this op
portunity to regain his position as propri
etary. He bade Stone to require the oath

Oliver Cromwell.

of fidelity to the proprietary from those who
occupied lands, and to issue all writs in his
name. He maintained that the province
now stood in the same relations to the Pro
tectorate which it had borne to the royalist
government of Charles I.

VOL. I. — II

162 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1650

So thought Cromwell, but not so Clay-
borne or the Maryland Puritans. They de
posed Stone, and put in power Fuller, who
was in sympathy with their designs. There
resulted a reversal of the acts of former
assemblies, and legislation hostile to the
Catholics. The new assembly, from which
Catholics were carefully excluded by dis-
franchisement, at once repealed the Act of
Toleration. Protection was withdrawn from
those who professed the popish religion,
and they were forbidden the exercise of
that faith in the province. Severe penal
ties were threatened against " prelacy" and
" licentiousness," thus restricting the bene
fits of their " Act concerning Religion " to
the Puritan element now in power. The
authority of the proprietary himself was dis
puted, and colonists were invited to take
lands without his knowledge or consent.

Baltimore adopted vigorous measures.
By his orders Stone made a forcible attempt
to regain control of the province, but was
defeated at Providence and taken prisoner.
His life was spared, but four of his men

1656] BALTIMORE AND HIS MARYLAND 163

were condemned and executed. Baltimore
again invoked the powerful intervention of
Cromwell, and again were the enemies of
Maryland sternly rebuked for their inter
ference in the affairs of that province, and
told in plain language to leave matters as
they had found them. In 1656, after an
inquiry by the Commissioners of Trade, the
claims of Baltimore were admitted to be
just, and he promptly sent his brother
Philip to be a member of the council and
secretary of the province. The legislation
of the usurping Puritans was set aside, reli
gious toleration once more had full sway,
and a general pardon was proclaimed to
those who had taken part in the late dis
turbances.

In the meantime, Fendall, who had been
appointed governor by Baltimore, plotted to
make himself independent of his master,
and, with the connivance of the assembly,
proceeded to usurp the authority which was
lawfully vested in the proprietary. But the
attempt was a miserable failure. Philip
Calvert was immediately made governor by

1 64 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1660

the now all-powerful proprietary, who had
the favor and support of Charles II., just
coming to the throne. Peace and prosper
ity came back to the colony so sorely and
frequently vexed by civil dissensions. The
laws were just and liberal, encouraging the
advent of settlers of whatever creed, while
the rule of the Calverts was wise and
benign, such as to merit the respect and
admiration of posterity. In 1643 Virginia
and Maryland together had less than twenty
thousand inhabitants. In 1660 Maryland
alone, according to Fuller, had eight thou
sand. Chalmers thinks there were no fewer
than twelve thousand at this date.

CHAPTER VII.

NEW NETHERLAND

WHILE the French explorer, Champlain,
was sailing along the shores of the lake
which bears his name, another equally
adventurous spirit, Henry Hudson, was on
his way to the western world. Hoping to
open a passage to India by a voyage to
the north, Hudson, an English navigator,
offered in 1609 to sail under the authority
of the Dutch East India Company. Driven
back by ice and fog from a northeast
course, he turned northwest. Searching up
and down near the parallel of 40°, he en
tered the mouth of the great river which
perpetuates his name. He found the coun
try inviting to the eye, and occupied by
natives friendly in disposition. The sub
sequent career of this bold mariner has a
mournful interest. He never returned to

1 66 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1609

Holland, but, touching at Dartmouth, was
restrained by the English authorities, and
forbidden longer to employ his skill and
experience for the benefit of the Dutch.
Again entering the English service and sent
once more to discover the northwest pas
sage, he sailed into the waters of the bay

Seal of New Amsterdam.

which still bears his name, where cold and
hunger transformed the silent discontent of
his crew into open mutiny, and they left the
fearless navigator to perish amid the ice
bergs of the frozen north.

Hudson had sent to Holland a report of
the Great River and the country bordering

Peter Stuyvesant.

1614]

NEW NETHERLAND

169

it, rich in fur-bearing animals, and it had
excited eager interest. Private individuals
sent expeditions thither and carried on a
profitable trade with the natives. A few
Dutch were here when, in 1613, Captain
Argall sailed from Virginia against the
French at Port Royal, Acadia, now Annap
olis in Nova Scotia, who were encroaching
upon the English possessions on the coast
of Maine. He compelled them to surren
der. On his return, he visited the Dutch
traders of Manhattan Island, and forced
them also, as it had been discovered by
Cabot in 1497, to acknowledge the sov
ereignty of England
over this entire region.
It was in 1614 that
the Dutch States-Gen
eral, in the charter
given to a company of
merchants, named the
Hudson Valley New
Netherland. To facil
itate trade this company made a treaty with
the Five Nations and subordinate tribes,

Seal of New Netherland.

170 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1618

memorable as the first compact formed be
tween the whites and the savages. In it the
Indians were regarded as possessing equal
rights and privileges with their white breth
ren. The treaty was renewed in 1645, and
continued in force till the English occupa
tion, 1664. In 1618, the charter of the New
Netherland Company having expired, the
Dutch West India Company was offered a
limited incorporation, but it was not until
1621 that it received its charter, and it was
two years later that it was completely
organized and approved by the States-
General. By this company were sent out
Mey, as Director, to the Delaware or
South River, and Tienpont to the Hudson
or North River. Four miles below Phila
delphia Fort Nassau was erected, and
where Albany now stands was begun the
trading-post called Fort Orange.

In 1626 Tienpont's successor, Peter
Minuit, a German, born at Wesel, was
appointed Director-General of New Neth
erland. He bought of the Indians, for
the sum of twenty-four dollars, the entire

i626] NE W NETHERLAND. 1 7 1

island of Manhattan, and a fort called New
Amsterdam was built. The State of New
York dates its beginning from this trans
action.

By their usually honest dealing with the
natives the Dutch settlers gained the

Earliest Picture of New Amsterdam.

friendship of the Five Nations, whose
good-will was partly on this account trans
ferred to the English colonists later. The
Dutch were not only friendly to the red
men, but tried to open social and com
mercial relations with the Plymouth colo
nists as well. Governor Bradford replied,

172 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1630

mildly urging the Dutch to " clear their
title" to a territory which the English
claimed by right of discovery.

The present State of Delaware soon

De Vries.

became the scene of attempts at settle
ment. De Vries began, in 1632, a colony
on the banks of the Delaware, but it was
quickly laid waste by the savages, who had
been needlessly provoked by the insolence
of the commander left in charge of the
colony. In 1633 Minuit was succeeded
by Van Twiller, and a fort was erected at

1633]

NEW NETHERLAND

173

Hartford, though the English claimed this
country as theirs. Emigrants from the
Plymouth colony began the settlement of
Windsor, in spite of the protests of the
Dutch. Long Island was invaded by
enterprising New Englanders, regardless
of the claim of New Netherland thereto.
This " irrepressible conflict" between two
races was by no means abated by the intro
duction of a third. As early as 1626, Gus-

Costumes of Swedes.

tavus Adolphus, King of Sweden and the
hero of the Thirty Years' War, had enter
tained the idea of establishing colonies in
America, and in pursuance of that object

174 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1638

had encouraged the formation of a com
pany, not only for trading purposes but also
to secure a refuge for the "oppressed of all
Christendom." To Usselinx, an Antwerp
merchant, the originator of the Dutch West
India Company, belongs the honor of first
suggesting to the king this enterprise. The
glorious death of Gustavus on the victorious
field of Liitzen in 1632 deferred the execu
tion of a purpose which had not been for
gotten even in the midst of that long and
arduous campaign. But a few days before
he fell, the Protestant hero had spoken of
the colonial prospect as "the jewel of his
kingdom."

In 1638 Minuit, who had already figured
as governor of New Netherland, having
offered his services to Sweden, was in
trusted with the leadership of the first
Swedish colony to America. After a few
days' stay at Jamestown the new-comers
finally reached their wished-for destination
on the west shore of the Delaware Bay and
River. Proceeding up the latter, one of
their first acts was to build a fort on a little

i6so] NEW NETHERLAND 175

stream about two miles from its junction
with the Delaware, which they named Fort
Christina, in honor of the young queen of
Sweden. Near this spot stands the present
city of Wilmington. The country from
Cape Henlopen to the falls at Trenton
received the title of New Sweden.

It was in this very year that Kieft came
to supersede Van Twiller, who had given
just cause for complaint by his eagerness to
enrich himself at the expense of the West
India Company. During the administra
tion of Kieft occurred the long and doubt
ful conflict with the natives detailed in the
succeeding chapter. Arbitrary and exact
ing, he drove the Indians to extremities,
and involved the Dutch settlements in a
war which for a time threatened their de
struction. Not till 1645 was peace re-estab
lished, and in 1647 the unpopular governor
was recalled. In 1647 n°t more than three
hundred fighting men remained in the whole
province. Its total population was between
fifteen hundred and two thousand. In 1652
New Amsterdam had a population of seven

i76

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1650

or eight hundred. In 1664 Stuyvesant put
the number in the province at ten thousand,
about fifteen hundred of whom were in New
Amsterdam.

The old Stadt Huys at New Amsterdam.

The next governor, Stuyvesant, was the
last and much the ablest ruler among those
who directed the destinies of New Nether-
land. His administration embraced a period

90 Longitude West 85 from Greenwich 80

I655J

NEW NETHERLAND

177

of seventeen years,
during which he re
newed the former
friendly relations
with the savages,
made a treaty with
New England, giv
ing up pretensions
to Connecticut as
well as relinquishing
the east end of Long
Island, and com
pelled the Swedes,
in 1655, to acknowl
edge the Dutch
supremacy. It was
while he was absent
on his expedition
against the Swedes,
leaving New Am
sterdam unprotect
ed, that the river
Indians, watchful of
their opportunity,
invaded and laid

VOL. I. — 12

1 78 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1663

waste the surrounding country. In 1663
the savages attacked the village on the

The Duke of York, afterwards James II.

Esopus, now Kingston, and almost de
stroyed it. It was not until the energetic
governor made a vigorous campaign against
the Esopus tribe, whom he completely sub
dued, that peace was established on a firm
footing.

But the Dutch sway in their little part of
the New World was about to end. The

i664]

NEW NETHERLAND

179

English had never given over their claim to
the country by virtue of their first discovery
of the North American continent. The
New Netherlanders, tired of arbitrary rule,
sighed for the larger freedom of their New
England neighbors. Therefore, when in
1664 Charles II. granted to his brother,
the Duke of York, the territory which the
Dutch were occupying, and sent a fleet to
demand its submission, the English invader

PETRUS STUYVESANT

enera^Gover norin ChieFof Amstercta
InNewNefherland now caJIed.New.V5rk
tchWetf WialsIarukD?ec[,A.D.l6^

S£g

The Tomb of Stuyvesant.

V*^

was welcomed. Almost the only resistance
came from the stout-hearted governor, who

i8o DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1664

could hardly be dissuaded from fighting the
English single-handed, and who signed the
agreement to surrender only when his
magistrates had, in spite of him, agreed to
the proposed terms. But the founders of
the Empire State have left an indelible
impress upon the Union, which their de
scendants have helped to strengthen and
perpetuate. They were honest, thrifty,
devout, tolerant of the opinions of others.
As Holland sheltered the English Puritans
from ecclesiastical intolerance, so New Neth-
erland welcomed within her borders the
victims of New England bigotry and nar
rowness.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST INDIAN WARS

TROUBLES between the Indians and the
whites arose so early as 1636. John Old-
ham was murdered on Block Island by a
party of Pequot Indians. Vane of Massa
chusetts sent Endicott to inflict punishment.
The Pequots in turn attacked the fort at
Saybrook, and in 1637 threatened Wethers-
field. They were planning a union with the
Narragansets for the destruction of the
English, when Roger Williams informed
the Massachusetts colony of their designs
and, at the urgent request of the governor
and council, hastened to the chief of the
Narragansets and dissuaded him from en
tering into the alliance.

The moment was critical. Captain Mason
with about ninety English and seventy Mo-
hegans, under their sachem, Uncas (a sub

182 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1637

chief, who with his district, Mohegan, had
rebelled against the Pequot sachem, Sas-
sacus), was sent from Hartford down the
Connecticut River. Entering the Sound,
he sailed past the mouth of the Thames
and anchored in Narragansett Bay, at the
foot of Tower Hill, near Point Judith. He
knew that keen-eyed scouts from the Pequot
stronghold on the west bank of the Mystic
River, near Groton, had, as his three little
ships skirted the shore, been watching him,
to give warning of his approach. He there
fore resolved to come upon the enemy from
an unlooked-for quarter. This plan was
directly contrary to his instructions, which
required him to land at the mouth of the
Thames and attack the fort from the west
side. He hoped, marching westward across
the country, to take the enemy by surprise
on their unprotected rear, while the Indians,
trusting in the strength of their fort, as it
fronted the west, should believe themselves
secure.

Thirteen men had been sent back to the
Thames with the vessels. Two hundred

NEW ENGLAND

maner ofthe de

Attack on the Fort

of the Pequots on the Mystic River.

1637] THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 187

Narragansets had joined the expedition,
though their sachem, Miantonomoh, thought
the English too weak to fight the dreaded
Pequots. Mason's enterprise was admirably
planned, and he was as fortunate as he was
bold and skilful. He divided his men into
two parties. One, led by Underbill, climbed
the steep ascent on the south side of the
Indian village ; the other, directed by Mason
himself, mounted the northern slope. The
garrison was buried in slumber, made more
profound by carousals the preceding night.
One Indian was heard to cry out " English
men " before the volley of musketry from
the attacking force told that the white en
emy had come. Mason entered a wigwam
and fought, as did the others, hand-to-hand
with the now awakened and desperate foe.
Coming out with a firebrand and exclaiming
;' We must burn them," he set fire to the
wigwam. The flames were quickly carried
through the fort by the northeast wind.
Underhill from his side applied powder.
So rapidly did the flames spread that the
English had difficulty in making good their

i88

DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1637

escape, while the Pequots who escaped the
sword were doomed to perish by fire. In
an hour's time from four hundred to six
hundred had fallen, more than half of them
women and children. Of the Englishmen
two were killed and about twenty wounded.

In this dreadful
slaughter the
Narragansets
had little share,
for they had
shown such

Attack on the Pequot Fort.

1637] THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 189

fear that Mason had said to Uncas, "Tell
them not to fly, but stand at what distance
they please and see whether Englishmen
will now fight or not."

With the approach of day three hundred
Pequots advanced from a second fort in
tending to fight, but they were struck with
horror at the sight of their dead fellow-
warriors. Keeping the enemy at bay, the
English marched to the vessels, which had
arrived at Pequot Harbor, and, placing the
wounded on board, continued their march
to Saybrook. The remnant of the Pequots
sought to escape from the country, mov
ing westward along the Sound. Captain
Stoughton, sent with one hundred and
twenty Massachusetts men, was guided by
the Narragansets to a swamp in which a
little band of those hostile savages had
hidden. The men were slain, offering little
resistance. The women and children were
divided among the Indian allies or sold into
slavery by the colonists of Massachusetts
Bay.

Mason and Stoughton together sailed

190 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1637

from Saybrook along the shore, while
Uncas with his men tracked the fugitives by
land. At Guilford a Pequot sachem was
entrapped, shot, and his head thrust into
the crotch of an oak-tree near the harbor,
giving the place the name of Sachem's
Head. Near the town of Fairfield a last
stand was made by the hunted redskins, in
a swamp, to which the English were guided
by a renegade Pequot. The tribe with
whom the Pequots had taken shelter, also
the women and children, were allowed to
give themselves up. The men were shot
down or broke through and escaped. The
wife of Mononotto fell into the hands of
the English. This Indian squaw had once
shown kindness to two captive girls, and
by Winthrop's orders she was kindly treated
in return. The Pequots, once so powerful,
were well-nigh exterminated. Those taken
prisoners were spared only to be held in
bondage, Mononotto's wife with the rest.
Some were absorbed by the Narragansets,
others by the Mohegans, while the settlers
of Connecticut, upon whom the war had

1638] THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 191

fallen so heavily, came into possession of
the Pequot land.

For nearly forty years the New England
colonies were not again molested, the mer
ciless vigor with which they had fought
making a lasting impression upon their
blood-thirsty foes. The cruel slavery to
which the surviving natives were subjected,
the English justified by the example of the
Jews in their treatment of the Canaanites.

The Narraganset chief, Miantonomoh,
had become the friend and ally
of the English by a treaty rati
fied in 1636, mainly through Signature of
the good offices of Roger Wil
liams. In 1638, after the destruction of
the Pequots, there was a new treaty, em
bracing Uncas with his bold Mohegans,
and stipulating that any quarrel between
Miantonomoh and Uncas should be referred
to the English. In 1642 Miantonomoh was
accused of plotting against the English,
and summoned before the General Court
at Boston. Though acquitted he vowed
revenge upon Uncas as the instigator of

JCTLl^

192 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1642

the charge. His friendship for Roger
Williams, as also for Samuel Gorton, the
purchaser of Shawomet, or Warwick, R. I.,
which was claimed by Massachusetts, had
perhaps created a prejudice against him.
At any rate, when a quarrel arose between
Uncas and Sequasson, Miantonomoh's
friend and ally, while the latter naturally
sided with Sequasson, the sympathies of
the English were with Uncas, who had
aided them against the Pequots. With
the consent of Connecticut and Massachu
setts Miantonomoh took the field against
Uncas, who had attacked Sequasson. He
was defeated and taken prisoner. Carried
to Hartford he was held to await the deci
sion of the Commissioners of the United
Colonies at Boston. They would not re
lease him, yet had no valid ground for
putting him to death. The case was re
ferred to five clergymen, and they voted
for his execution. For this purpose the
commissioners gave orders to turn the
brave warrior over to Uncas, English wit
nesses to be present and see that no cruelty

1642]

THE FIRST INDIAN WARS

193

was perpetrated. The sentence was carried
into effect near Norwich. Cutting a piece
of flesh from the shoulder of his murdered
enemy, Uncas ate it with savage relish,

The Grave of Miantonomoh.

declaring it to be the sweetest meat he had
ever tasted.

The Dutch, too, as we have to some
extent seen already, felt the horrors of
Indian warfare. Kieft, the Dutch director-

VOL. I. — 13

194 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1640

general, a man cruel, avaricious, and obsti
nate, angered the red men by demanding
tribute from them as their protector, while
he refused them guns or ammunition. The
savages replied that they had to their own
cost shown kindness to the Dutch when in
need of food, but would not pay tribute.
Kieft attacked. Some of the Indians were
killed and their crops destroyed. This
roused their revengeful passions to the
utmost. The Raritan savages visited the
colony of De Vries, on Staten Island, with
death and devastation. Reward was offered
for the head of any one of the murderers.
An Indian never forgot an injury. The
nephew of one of the natives who twenty
years before had been wantonly killed went
to sell furs at Fort Amsterdam, and while
there revenged his uncle's murder by the
slaughter of an unoffending colonist. Spite
of warlike preparations by Kieft and his
assembly in 1641-42, the tribe would not
give up the culprit. The following year
another settler was knifed by a drunken
Indian. Wampum was indeed offered in

1643] THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 195

atonement, while an indignant plea was
urged by the savages against the liquor
traffic, which demoralized their young men
and rendered them dangerous alike to
friend and foe. But remonstrance and
blood-money could not satisfy Kieft. At
Pavonia and at Corker's Hook1 the Dutch
fell venomously upon the sleeping and
unsuspecting enemy. Men, women, and
children were slaughtered, none spared.
In turn the tribes along the lower Hud
son, to the number of eleven, united and
desperately attacked the Dutch wherever
found. Only near the walls of Fort Am
sterdam was there safety. The governor
appointed a day of fasting, which it seems
was kept with effect. The sale of liquor
to the red men was at last prohibited, and
peace for a time secured.

Soon, however, the redskins along the
Hudson were again up in arms. The noted
Underbill, who with Mason had been the
scourge of the Pequots, came to the fight

1 Now in the New York City limits, just below Broadway Ferry,
East River.

196 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1643

with fifty Englishmen as allies of the Dutch.
Not waiting to be attacked, the Indians
laid waste the settlements, even threatening
Fort Amsterdam itself. At a place now
known as Pelham Neck, near New Ro-
chelle, lived the famous but unfortunate
Mrs. Hutchinson, a fugitive from the per
secuting zeal of Massachusetts. Here the
implacable savages butchered her and her
family in cold blood. Her little grand
daughter alone was spared, and led captive
to a far-off wigwam prison. Only at Graves-
end, on Long Island, was a successful stand
made, and that by a woman, Lady Deborah
Moody, another exile from religious perse
cution, who with forty stout-hearted men
defended her plantation and compelled the
savages to beat a retreat.

The colony was in extremity. New
Haven refused to aid, because, as a mem
ber of the New England confederacy, it
could not act alone, and because it was not
satisfied that the Dutch war was just. An
appeal was made by Kieft's eight advisers
to both the States-General and the West

i645] THE FIRST INDIAN WARS 197

India Company in Holland. The sad con
dition of the colonists was fully set forth,
and the responsibility directly ascribed to
the mismanagement of Kieft. At the same
time, undismayed by the gloomy outlook,
the courage of the sturdy Dutchmen rose
with the emergency. Small parties were
sent out against the Connecticut savages in
the vicinity of Stamford. Indian villages
on Long Island were surprised and the
natives put to the sword. In two instances
at least the victors disgraced humanity by
torturing the captured.

In these engagements Underhill was
conspicuous and most energetic. Having
made himself familiar with the position of
the Indians near Stamford, he sailed from
Manhattan with one hundred and fifty men,
landed at Greenwich, and, marching all day,
at midnight drew near the enemy. His
approach was not wholly unannounced, for
the moon was full. The fight was des
perate and bloody. The tragedy that had
made memorable the banks of the Mystic
in the destruction of the Pequot fort was

198 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1645

now almost equalled. After the example
of his old comrade Mason, Underhill fired
the village. By flame, shot, or sword more
than five hundred human beings perished.

While New Netherland was awaiting
some message of cheer from Holland, a
company of Dutch soldiers came from
Curagoa, but they did little to follow up
the successes already gained. Again the
Eight sent a memorial to the company,
boldly condemning the conduct of the
director and demanding his recall. Their
remonstrances were at last heeded, and
the removal of the unpopular governor
resolved upon. In 1647 Kieft set sail for
Holland, but the ship was wrecked, and he
with nearly all on board was drowned.

It was high time for a change. In the
two years, 1643-45, while sixteen hundred
Indians had been slain, Manhattan had
become nearly depopulated. In 1645 peace
was concluded, not only with the smaller
tribes in the vicinity, but also with the
powerful Mohawks about Fort Orange,
and finally with all the Indians belonging

1650]

THE FIRST INDIAN WARS

199

to the Five Nations or acknowledging
their authority. A pleasing incident of this
treaty was the promise of the Indians to re
store the eight-year-
old granddaughter
of Mrs. Hutchin-
son, a promise
which they faith
fully performed in
1646. The great
compact was made
under the shadow
of the Fort Am
sterdam walls, and

the universal joy was expressed by a day
of thanksgiving.

An interval of peace for ten years was
now enjoyed, when the killing of a squaw
for stealing some peaches led to an attack
by several hundred of the infuriated sav
ages upon New Amsterdam. They were
repulsed here, but crossing to the shore of
New Jersey they laid waste the settlements
there. Staten Island, too, was swept with
fire and sword. One hundred people were

Totem or Tribe Mark of the Five Nations.

200 DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT [1660

slain, 150 more taken captive, 300 made
homeless. Peace was again effected and
maintained for three years, when fresh
quarrels began. It was not until 1660 that
a more general and lasting treaty was
brought about, on which occasion a Mo
hawk and a Minqua chief gave pledges in
behalf of the Indians, and acted as media
tors between the contending parties.

PERIOD II.

ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1660-1763

CHAPTER I.

NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS

THE Commonwealth in England went to
pieces at the death of Oliver Cromwell, its
founder. The Stuart dynasty came back,
but, alas ! unimproved. Charles II. was a
much meaner man than his father, and
James II. was more detestable still. The
rule of such kings was destined to work
sad changes in the hitherto free condition
of Massachusetts. This colony had sym
pathized with the Commonwealth more
heartily than any of the others. Hither
had fled for refuge Goffe and Whalley, two

202 ENGLISH AMERICA [1660

of the accomplices in the death of Charles
I. Congregational church polity was here
established by law, to the exclusion of all
others, even of episcopacy, for whose sake
Charles was harrying poor Covenanters to
death on every hillside in Scotland. Nor
would his lawyers let the king forget
Charles I.'s attack on the Massachusetts
charter, begun so early as 1635, or the
grounds therefor, such as the unwarranted
transfer of it to Boston, or the likelihood
that but for the outbreak of the Civil
War it would have been annulled by the
Long Parliament itself. Obviously Massa
chusetts could not hope to be let alone by
the home government which had just come
in.

At first the king, graciously responding
to the colony's humble petition, confirmed
the charter granted by his father ; but no
sooner had he done so than the hot royal
ists about him began plotting to overthrow
the same, and their purpose never slum
bered till it was accomplished. Massachu
setts was too prosperous and too visibly

i66o] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 203

destined for great power in America to be
suffered longer to go its independent way
as hitherto.

The province — as yet, of course, exclud-

King Charles II.

ing Plymouth with its twelve towns and
five thousand inhabitants — contained at
this time, 1660, about twenty-five thousand
souls, living in fifty-two towns. These
were nearly all on the coast ; Dedham,

204 ENGLISH AMERICA [1661

Concord, Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlbor-
ough, and the Connecticut Valley hamlets
of Springfield, Hadley, and Northampton
being the most noteworthy exceptions.
Though agriculture was the principal busi
ness, fishing was a staple industry, its
product going to France, Spain, and the
Straits. Pipe-staves, fir-boards, much mate
rial for ships, as masts, pitch and tar, also
pork and beef, horses and corn, were
shipped from this colony to Virginia, in
return for tobacco and sugar either for
home consumption or for export to Eng
land. Some iron was manufactured. The
province enjoyed great prosperity. Boston
stood forth as a lively and growing centre,
and an English traveller about this time
declared some of its merchants to be " dam
nable rich."

As their most precious possession the
colonists prized their liberties, which they
claimed in virtue of their original patent.
In a paper which it put forth on June 10,
1 66 1, the General Court asserted for the
colony the right to elect and empower its

1661] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 205

own officers, both high and low, to make
its laws, to execute the same without ap
peal so long as they were not repugnant to
those of England, and to defend itself by
force and arms when necessary, against
every infringement of its rights, even from
acts of Parliament or of the king, if prej
udicial to the country or contrary to just
colonial legislation. In a word Massachu
setts, even so early, regarded itself to all
intents and purposes an independent State,
and would have proclaimed accordingly had
it felt sufficiently strong.

Manifestly the king would not grant so
much. On the occasion of his confirming
the charter he demanded that the oath of
allegiance be taken by the people of the
colony; that justice be administered there
in his name; and that the franchise be
extended to all freemen of sufficient sub
stance, with the liberty to use in worship,
public and private, the forms of the English
Church. The people obeyed but in part,
for they would not even appear to admit
the king's will to be their law. The fran-

206 ENGLISH AMERICA [1664

chise was slightly extended, in a grudging
way, but no new religious privileges were
at this time conceded. Unfortunately polit
ical and religious liberty were now in
conflict. It was worse for the Baptists and
Quakers that the king favored them, and
the treatment which they received in the
colony inclined them to the royalist side in
the controversy.

In July, 1664, commissioners arrived in
Boston with full authority to investigate
the administration of the New England
charters. Such a procedure not being pro
vided for in the Massachusetts document,
the General Court, backed by the citizens
almost to a man, successfully prevented
complainants from appearing before the
commission. The commissioners having
summoned the colony as defendant in a cer
tain case, a herald trumpeted proclamation
through the streets, on the morning set for
the trial, inhibiting all from aiding their
designs. The trial collapsed, and the
gentlemen who had ordered it, baffled and
disgusted, moved on to New Hampshire,

1668] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 207

there also to be balked by a decree of the
Massachusetts Governor and Council for
bidding the towns so much as to meet at
their behest.

Vengeance for such defiance was delayed
by Charles II.'s very vices. Clarendon's
fall had left him surrounded by profligate
aides, too timid and too indolent to face
the resolute men of Massachusetts. They
often discussed the contumacy of the
colony, but went no further than words.
Massachusetts was even encouraged, in
1668, forcibly to re-assert its authority in
Maine, against rule either by the king or
by Sir Ferdinando Gorges's heir as pro
prietary.

Its charter had assigned to the colony
land to a point three miles north of the
Merrimac. Bold in the favor of the Com
monwealth, the authorities measured from
the head-waters of that river. But Plym
outh had originally claimed all the ter
ritory west of the Kennebec, and had sold
it to Gorges. Charles II. favored the
Gorges heirs against Massachusetts, and

208 ENGLISH AMERICA [1675

for some years previous to 1668 Massachu
setts' power over Maine had been in abey
ance. Ten years later, in 1678, to make
assurance doubly sure, Massachusetts
bought off the Gorges claimants, at the
round price of twelve hundred and fifty
pounds sterling.

From 1641 Massachusetts had borne
sway in New Hampshire as well, ignoring
John Mason's claim under Charles I.'s
charters of 1629 and 1635, still urged by
one of Mason's grandsons, backed by
Charles II. Here Massachusetts was
beaten. In July, 1679, New Hampshire
was permanently separated from her, and
erected into a royal province, of a nature
to be explained in a subsequent chapter,
being the earliest government of this kind
in New England.

These territorial assumptions on the part
of Massachusetts much increased the king's
hostility. This probably would not have
proved fatal had it not been re-enforced by
the determination of the merchants and
manufacturers of the mother-country to

1662] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 209

crush what they feared was becoming a rival
power beyond seas. They insisted upon
full enforcement of the Navigation Laws,
which made America's foreign trade in a
cruel degree subservient to English inter
est. So incorrigible was the colony, it was
found that this end could be compassed
only by the abrogation of the charter, so
that English law might become immedi
ately valid in Massachusetts, colonial laws
to the contrary notwithstanding. Accord
ingly, in 1684, the charter was vacated and
the colonists ceased to be free, their old
government with its popular representation
giving way to an arbitrary commission.
The other New England colonies —

o

Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and
New Haven — had made haste to proclaim
Charles II. so soon as restored to the
throne, and to begin carrying on their
governments in his name. That beautiful
and able man, the younger Winthrop, sped
to London on Connecticut's behalf, and,
aided by his colony's friends at court, the
Earls of Clarendon and Manchester and

VOL. I. — 14

210

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1662

Viscount Say and Seal, in 1662 secured to
Connecticut, now made to include New
Haven, a charter so liberal that it con
tinued till October 5, 1818, the ground law
of the State, then to be supplanted only by

John Winthrop the Younger.

a close vote. Under this paper, which
declared all lands between the Narragan-
sett River and the Pacific Ocean Connec
ticut territory, Connecticut received every
whit of that right to govern itself which

1662] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 211

Charles was so sternly challenging in the
case of Massachusetts.

From this time on, as indeed earlier,
Connecticut was for many years perhaps
the most delightful example of popular
government in all history. Connecticut
and New Haven together had about ten
thousand inhabitants. Their rulers were
just, wise, and of a mind truly to serve the
people. Here none were persecuted for
their faith. Education was universal. Few
were poor, none very rich. Nearly all
supplies were of domestic production,
nothing as yet being exported but a few
cattle.

Under the second Charles Rhode Island
fared quite as well as Connecticut. This
was remarkable, inasmuch as the little col
ony of three thousand souls, in their four
towns of Providence, Newport, Portsmouth,
and Warwick, insisted on "holding forth
the lively experiment " -and it proved lively
indeed — " of full liberty in religious con
cernments." Charles did not oppose this,
and Clarendon favored it, a motive of both

212 ENGLISH AMERICA [1680

here, as with Connecticut, being to rear in
New England a power friendly to the
Crown, that should rival and check Massa
chusetts. Both these commonwealths were
granted absolute independence in all but
name. No oath of allegiance to the king
was demanded. Appeals to England were
not provided for.

Though having no quarrel with the king,
the two southern colonies were not without
their trials. Connecticut, besides continual
fear of the Dutch and the Indians, was
much agitated by the controversy over the
question whether children of moral parents
not church members should be baptized, a
question at length settled affirmatively by
the so-called Half-Way Covenant. It also
had its boundary disputes with Massachu
setts, with Rhode Island — for Connecticut
took the Narragansett River of its charter
to be the bay of that name — and with New
York, which, by the Duke of York's new
patent, issued on the recovery of that
province from the Dutch in 1674, reached
the Connecticut River. During England's

i68s] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 213

war with Holland, 1672-74, all the colonies
stood in some fear of Dutch attacks.

Rhode Island had worse troubles than
Connecticut. It, too, had boundary dis
putes, serious and perpetual ; but graver by
much were its internal feuds, caused partly
by the mutual jealousy of its four towns,
partly by the numerous and jarring religious
persuasions here represented. Government
was painfully feeble. Only with utmost
difficulty could the necessary taxes be
raised. Warwick in particular was for
some time in arrears to John Clark, of
Newport, for his invaluable services in
securing the charter of 1663. Quakers and
the divers sorts of Baptists valiantly warred
each against other, using, with dreadful
address, those most deadly of carnal weap
ons, tongue and pen. On George Fox's
visit to the colony, Roger Williams, zealous
for a debate, pursued the eminent Quaker
from Providence to Newport, rowing thither
in his canoe and arriving at midnight, only
to find that his intended opponent had de
parted. The latter's champion was ready,

2I4

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1685

however, and a discussion of four days
ensued.

Before its sentence of death reached
Massachusetts Charles II. was no more,
and James II., his brother, had ascended

Sir Edmc

the throne. It was for a time uncertain
what sort of authority the stricken colony
would be called to accept. Already, as
Duke of York, James II. had been Propri
etary of Maine east of the Kennebec (Saga-

i68s] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 215

dahoc), as well as of Delaware, New Jersey,
and New York. Now that he had the
problem of ruling Massachusetts to solve,
it naturally occurred to the king to make
Sir Edmond Andros, already governor of
New York, master also over the whole of
English America from the Saint Croix to
the Delaware.

In southern New England the reign of
Andros wrought .no downright persecu
tion. He suspended the charters, and,
with an irresponsible council in each col
ony, assumed all legislative as well as ad
ministrative power. Rhode Island sub
mitted tamely. Her sister colony did the
same, save that, at Hartford, according to
good tradition, in the midst of the alterca
tion about delivering the charter, prolonged
into candle-light, suddenly it was dark, and
the precious document disappeared to a
secure place in the hollow trunk of an oak.
This tree, henceforth called the Charter
Oak, stood till prostrated by a gale on
August 20, 1856.

But in Massachusetts the colonists' worst

2l6

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1685

fears were realized. Andros, with a council
of his own creation, made laws, levied taxes,
and controlled the militia. He had author
ity to suppress all printing-presses and to

The Charter Oak at Hartford.

encourage Episcopacy. In the latter inter
est he opened King's Chapel to the Prayer
Book. His permission was required for
any one to leave the colony. Extortionate
fees and taxes were imposed. Puritans had

i688] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 217

to swear on the Bible, which they regarded
wicked, or be disfranchised. Personal and
proprietary rights were summarily set at
naught, and all deeds to land were declared
void till renewed — for money, of course.
The citizens were reduced to a condition
hardly short of slavery.

There is no describing the joy which per
vaded New England as the news of the
Revolution of 1688 flew from colony to
colony. Andros slunk away from Boston,
glad to escape alive. Drums beat and gala-
day was kept. Old magistrates were rein
stated. Town meetings were resumed. All
believed that God had interposed, in an
swer to prayer, to bring deliverance to his
people from popery and thraldom.

This revolution, ushering in the liberal
monarchy of William and Mary, restored
to Rhode Island and Connecticut their old
charter governments in full. New Hamp
shire, after a momentary union with Massa
chusetts again, became once more a royal
province. As to Massachusetts itself, a
large party of the citizens now either did

218 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

not wish the old state of things renewed, or
were too timid to agree in demanding back
their charter as of right. Had they been
bold and united, they might have succeeded
in this without any opposition from the
Crown. Instead, a new charter was con
ferred, creating Massachusetts also a royal
province, yet with government more liberal
than the other provinces of this order en
joyed. The governor was appointed by the
Crown, and could convene, adjourn, or dis
solve the Legislature. With the consent of
his council he also created the judges, from
whose highest sentence appeal could be
taken to the Privy Council. The governor
could veto legislation, and the king annul
any law under three years old.

If in these things the new polity was
inferior to the old, in two respects it was
superior : Suffrage was now practically uni
versal, and every species of religious profes
sion, save Catholicism, made legal. Also,
Massachusetts territory was enlarged south
ward to take in all Plymouth, eastward to
embrace Maine (Sagadahoc) and Nova

i697] NEW ENGLAND UNDER STUARTS 219

Scotia. Maine, henceforth including Saga-
dahoc, that is, all land eastward to the Saint
Croix, remained part of Massachusetts till
March 15, 1820, when it became a member
of the Union by itself. Nova Scotia, over
which Phips's conquest of Port Royal in
1690 had established a nominal rather than
a real English authority, was assigned to
France again by the Treaty of Ryswick,
1697.

Box in which the Connecticut Charter was kept.

CHAPTER II.

KING PHILIP'S WAR

SIMULTANEOUSLY with the Stuart Resto
ration another cloud darkened the New
England sky. Since the Pequot War,
Indians and whites had in the main been
friendly. This by itself is proof that our
fathers were less unjust to the red men
than is sometimes charged. They did
assume the right to acquire lands here,
and they had this right. The Indians were
not in any proper sense owners of New
England. They were few — by 1660 not
more numerous than the pale-faces — and,
far from settling or occupying the land,
roamed from place to place. Had it been
otherwise they, as barbarians, would have
had no such claim upon the territory as to
justify them in barring out civilization.
However, the colonists did not plead this

1675] KING PHILIP'S WAR 221

consideration. Whenever districts were
desired to which Indians had any obvious
title, it was both law and custom to pay
them their price. In this Roger Williams
and William Penn were not peculiar. If
individual white men sometimes cheated in
land trades, as in other negotiations, the
aggrieved side could not, and did not,
regard this as the white man's policy.

Yet little by little the Indians came to
distrust and hate the rival race. It did not
matter to the son of the forest, even if he
thought so far, that the neighborhood of
civilization greatly bettered his lot in many
things, as, for instance, giving him market
for corn and peltry, which he could ex
change for fire-arms, blankets, and all sorts
of valuable conveniences. The efforts to
teach and elevate him he appreciated still
less. As has been said, he loved better to
disfurnish the outside of other people's
heads than to furnish the inside of his own.
What he felt, and keenly, was that the new
comers treated him as an inferior, were day
by day narrowing his range, and slowly but

222 ENGLISH AMERICA [1675

surely reducing his condition to that of a
subject people. Dull as he was, he saw
that one of three fates confronted him : to
perish, to migrate, or to lay aside his
savage character and mode of life. Such
thoughts frenzied him.

The beautiful fidelity of Massasoit to
the people of Plymouth is already familiar.
His son Alexander, who succeeded him,
was of a spirit diametrically the reverse.
Convinced that he was plotting with the
Narragansets for hostile action, the Gov
ernor and Council of Plymouth sent Major
Winslow to bring him to court — for it must
be remembered that Massasoit's tribe, the
Pokanokets, had through him covenanted,
though probably with no clear idea of what
this meant, to be subject to the Plymouth
government. Alexander, for some reason,
became fatally ill while at Plymouth under
arrest, dying before reaching home. The
Indians suspected poison.

His brother Philip now became sachem.
Philip already had a grudge against the
whites, and was rendered trebly bitter by

1675] KING PHILIPS WAR 223

the indignity and violence, if nothing
worse, to which Alexander had been sub
jected. He resolved upon war, and in
1675 war was begun.

We shall never certainly know to what
extent Philip was an organizer. We be
lieve correct the view of Hubbard, the
contemporary historian, that he had pre
pared a wide-spread and pretty well ar
ranged conspiracy among the main tribes
of New England Indians, which might
have been fatal but for " the special provi
dence of God," causing hostilities to break
out ere the savages were ready. Palfrey
challenges this view of the case, but on
insufficient grounds.

One Sausaman, an educated Indian, pre
viously Philip's secretary, had left him
and joined the Christian Indians settled
at Natick. There were by this time sev
eral such communities, and also, accord
ing to Cotton Mather, many able Indian
preachers. At the risk of his life, as he
insisted, Sausaman had warned the Plym
outh magistrates that danger impended.

224 ENGLISH AMERICA [1675

He was soon murdered, apparently by
Philip's instigation. At least Philip never
denied this, nor did he after this time
ever again court friendly relations with
Plymouth, which he had constantly done
hitherto. On the contrary, re-enforce
ments of strange Indians, all ready for
the war-path, were continually flocking to
his camp, squaws and children at the
same time going to the Narraganset
country, manifestly for security.

The Plymouth authorities, preparing for
war, yet sent a kind letter to the sachem
advising him to peace. In vain. At Swan-
zey, the town nearest Mount Hope, Philip's
home, Indians at once began to kill and
ravage, and Majors Bradford and Cud-
worth marched thither with a force of
Plymouth soldiers. A Massachusetts con
tingent re-enforced them there, and they
prepared to advance. Seeing it impos
sible to hold his own against so many,
Philip crossed to Pocasset, now Tiverton,
and swept rapidly round to Dartmouth,
Middleborough, and Taunton, burning and

i675] KING PHILIP'S WAR 225

murdering as he went. He then retired
again to Tiverton, but in a few days
started with all his warriors for central
Massachusetts.

Here the Nipmucks, already at war,
which indicated an understanding between
them and the Pokanokets, had attacked
Mendon. The day after Philip joined them
there was a fight at Brookfield, the Nip-
mucks and their allies being victorious.
They proceeded to burn the town nearly
entire, though the inhabitants who sur
vived, after a three days' siege in a forti
fied house, were relieved by troops from
Boston just in the nick of time.

The Connecticut Valley was next the
theatre of war. Springfield, Hatfield, Deer-
field, and Northfield were attacked, the last
two having to be abandoned. At Hadley
the onset occurred on a fast-day. The
men rushed from their worship with their
muskets, which were ready to hand in
church, and hastily formed for battle. Be
wildered by the unexpected assault, they
were on the point of yielding, when,

VOL. I. — 15

226 ENGLISH AMERICA [i6y5

according to tradition, an aged hero with
long beard and queer clothing appeared,
placed himself at their head and directed
their movements. His evident acquaint
ance with fighting restored order and cour
age. The savages were driven pell-mell
out of town, but the pursuers looked in
vain for their deliverer. If the account
is correct, it was the regicide, General
Goffe, who had been a secret guest in
the house of the Rev. Mr. Russell. He
could not in such danger refrain from
engaging once again, as he had so often
done during the Civil War in England, in
the defence of God's people.

From Hadley a party went to Deerfield
to bring in the wheat that had been left
when the town was deserted. Ninety
picked men, the " flower of Essex," led
by Captain Lothrop, attended the wagons
as convoy. On their return, about seven
o'clock in the morning, by a little stream
in the present village of South Deerfield,
since called Bloody Brook in memory of
the event, the soldiers dispersed somewhat

1675]

KING PHILIP'S WAR

227

in quest of grapes, then ripe, when a sud
den and fatal volley from an ambush was
delivered upon them. The men had left

The Monument at Bloody Brook.

their muskets in the wagons and could
not regain them. Lothrop was shot dead,
and but seven or eight of his company

228 ENGLISH AMERICA [1675

escaped alive. A monument marks the
spot where this tragic affair occurred.

So early as July, 1675, Massachusetts
and Connecticut, acting for the New Eng
land Confederation, had effected a treaty
with the strong tribe of the Narragansets
in southern Rhode Island, engaging them
to remain neutral and to surrender any of
Philip's men coming within their jurisdic
tion. This agreement they did not keep.
After the attacks on Springfield and Hat-
field in October, great numbers of the
Pokanoket braves came to them, evidently
welcomed. To prevent their becoming a
centre of mischief, Connecticut, Massachu
setts, and Plymouth despatched a thousand
men to punish the Narragansets. They
met the foe at the old Palisade, in the midst
of a dense swamp in what is now South
Kingstown, Rhode Island. The terrible
cold which rendered this Narraganset cam
paign so severe had turned the marsh into
a bridge, and at once on their arrival the
soldiers, weary and hungry as they were
from their long march, and spite of its

1675]

KING PHILIPS WAR

220

being Sunday, advanced to the attack.
Massachusetts was in front, then Plymouth,
then Connecticut. Long and bitter was
the fight. The Indians, perfect marksmen,
took deadly aim at the leaders. Five cap
tains were killed outright and as many

£

Goffe at Had ley.

230 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

more mortally wounded. The fort was
taken, re-taken, and taken again, the whites
at last, to make sure work, setting fire to
the wigwams. The storming party lost in
killed and wounded one-fifth of its number.
This Swamp Fight, as it was called, broke
forever the strength of the Narragansets,
the tribe and its allies dispersing in all
directions.

In 1676 central Massachusetts was again
aflame. Lancaster was sacked and burned,
its inhabitants nearly all either carried
captive or put to death with indescribable
atrocities. Mrs. Rowlandson, wife of the
Lancaster minister, also her son and two
daughters, were among the captives. We
have this brave woman's story as subse
quently detailed by herself. Her youngest,
a little girl of six, wounded by a bullet, she
bore in her arms wherever they marched,
till the poor creature died of cold, starva
tion, and lack of care. The agonized
mother begged the privilege of tugging
along the corpse, but was refused. She
with her son and living daughter were

1676] KING PHILIP'S WAR 231

ransomed, after wandering up and down
with the savages eleven weeks and five
days.

From Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative we
have many interesting facts touching the
Indians' habits of life. They carried ample
stores from Lancaster, but soon squandered
them, and were reduced to a diet of gar
bage, horses' entrails, ears, and liver, with
broth made of horses' feet and legs. The
liver they seemed to prefer raw. Their
chief food was ground-nuts. They also
ate acorns, artichokes, beans, and various
sorts of roots. They especially delighted
in old bones, which, being heated to drive
out maggots and worms, they first boiled
for soup, then ground for use as meal.

The captive lady often saw Philip. At
his request she made a shirt and a cap for
his son, for which he paid her. Says
Hubbard, " Such was the goodness of God
to these poor captive women and children
that they found so much favor in the sight
of their enemies that they offered no wrong
to any of their persons save what they

232 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

could not help, being in many wants them
selves. Neither did they offer any uncivil
carriage to any of the females, nor ever
attempt the chastity of any of them."
So soon as negotiations were opened for
Mrs. Rowlandson's release, Philip told her
of this, and expressed the hope that they
would succeed. When her ransom had
arrived he met her with a smile, saying :
" I have pleasant words for you this morn
ing ; would you like to hear them ? You
are to go home to-morrow." Twenty
pounds were paid for her, raised by some
ladies of Boston, aided by a Mr. Usher.

Hostilities now bore southeastward.
Philip was in his glory. All the towns of
Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts
were in terror, nearly all in actual danger.
At Medfield twenty whites were killed.
Deserted Mendon was burned. Weymouth
was attacked, and eleven persons were mas
sacred in the edge of Plymouth. In Gro-
ton and Marlborough every house was laid
in ashes, as were all in lower Rhode Island
up to Warwick, and in Warwick all but

1676] KING PHILIP'S WAR 233

one. Sachem Canonchet of the Narra-
gansets drew into ambush at Pawtuxet a
band of Plymouth soldiers, of whom only
one escaped. Canonchet was subsequently
taken by Captain Denison and executed.
Rehoboth lost forty houses, Providence
nearly as many.

The Connecticut Valley was invaded
afresh. Springfield, Hadley, Northamp
ton, and Hatfield were once more startled
by the war-whoop and the whiz of the toma
hawk. Captain Turner, hearing of an
Indian camp at the falls of the Connecti
cut, now called by his name, in Montague,
advanced with a troop of one hundred and
eighty horse, arriving in sight of the en
campment at daylight. Dismounting and
proceeding stealthily to within sure shot,
they beat up the Indians' quarters with a
ringing volley of musketry. Resistance
was impossible. Those who did not fall by
bullet or sword rushed to the river, many
being carried over the falls. Three hun
dred savages perished, the English losing
but one man. A large stock of the enemy's

234 ENGLISH AMERICA [1678

food and ammunition was also destroyed.
Though so splendidly successful, the party
did not return to Hadley without consider
able loss, being set upon much of the way
by Indians who had heard the firing at the
falls and sped to the relief of their friends.
Turner was killed in the meadows by
Green River; his subordinate, Holyoke,
then commanding the retreat.

Turner's victory brought the war to a
crisis. The red men lacked resources.
The whites had learned the secrets of
savage warfare. They could no longer be
led into ambush, while their foe at no
time during the war ventured to engage
them in open field. Large parties of
Indians began to surrender; many roving
bands were captured. Hostilities continued
still many months in Maine, the whites
more and more uniformly successful, till
the Treaty of Casco, April 12, 1678, at last
terminated the wTar.

Hunted by the English backward and
forward, Philip was at last driven to his old
home upon Mount Hope. Here Captain

1676] KING PHILIP'S WAR 235

Church, one of the most practised of
Indian fighters, surprised him on the morn
ing of August 12, 1676, encamped upon a
little upland, which it is believed has been
exactly identified near a swamp at the foot
of the mountain. By residents in the
neighborhood it is known as Little Guinea.
At the first firing Philip, but partially
dressed, seized gun and powder-horn and
made for the swamp. Captain Church's
ambush was directly in his front. An Eng
lishman's piece missed fire, but an Indian
sent a bullet through the Great Sachem's
heart.

In this fearful war at least six hundred of
the English inhabitants either fell in battle
or were murdered by the enemy. A dozen
or more towns were utterly destroyed,
others greatly damaged. Some six hun
dred buildings, chiefly dwelling-houses, were
consumed by fire, and over a hundred thou
sand pounds of colonial money expended,
to say nothing of the immense losses in
goods and cattle.

Not without propriety has the.Pokanoket

236 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

chief been denominated a king. If not a
Charlemagne or a Louis XIV., he yet pos
sessed elements of true greatness. While
he lived his mind evidently guided, as his
will dominated and prolonged, the war.
This is saying much, for the Indian's dis
inclination to all strenuous or continuous
exertion was pronounced and proverbial.
Philip's treatment of Mrs. Rowlandson
must be declared magnanimous, especially
as, of course, he was but a savage king,
who might reasonably request us not to
measure him by our rules. The other party
to the war we have a right to judge more
rigidly, and just sentence in their case must
be severe. Philip's sorrowing, innocent
wife and son were brought prisoners to
Plymouth, and their lot referred to the min
isters. After long deliberation and prayer
it was decided that they should be sold into
slavery, and this was their fate.

CHAPTER III.

THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT

THE home life of colonial New England
was unique. Its like has appeared nowhere
else in human history. Mostwise it was
beautiful as well. In it religion was central
and supreme. The General Court of Plym
outh very early passed the following order :
" Noe dwelling-howse shal be builte above
halfe a myle from the meeting-howse in any
newe plantacion without leave from the
Court, except mylle-howses and fferme-
howses." In laying out a village the meet
ing-house, as the hub to which everything
was to be referred, was located first of all.
The minister's lot commonly adjoined.
Then a sufficiency of land was parcelled off
to each freeholder whereon to erect his
dwelling. Massachusetts from the first, and
Plymouth beginning somewhat later, also

238 ENGLISH AMERICA [1675

made eminent provision for schools — all in
the interest of religion.

The earliest residences were necessarily
of logs, shaped and fitted more or less
rudely according to the skill of the builder
or the time and means at his disposal.
There was usually one large room below,
which served as kitchen, dining-room, sit
ting-room, and parlor, and on the same floor
with this one or two lodging-rooms. An
unfinished attic constituted the dormitory
for the rising generation. A huge stone
chimney, terminating below in a still more
capacious fireplace, that would admit logs
from four to eight feet in length, conveyed
away the smoke, and with it much of the
heat. This involved no loss, as wood was
a drug. Communicating with the chimney
was the great stone baking-oven, whence
came the bouncing loaves of corn-bread,
duly "brown," the rich-colored " pompion "
pies, and the loin of venison, beef, or pork.

Over these bounties — and such they were
heartily esteemed, however meagre — often
as the family drew around the table, its

i675] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 239

head offered thanks to the heavenly Giver.
Each morning, after they had eaten, he
read a goodly portion of God's Word,
never less than a chapter, and then, not
kneeling but standing, led his household
in reverent and believing prayer for pro
tection, guidance, stimulus in good, and
for every needed grace. What purity,
what love of rectitude, what strength of
will did not the builders of America carry
forth from that family altar ! He who
would understand the richest side and the
deepest moving forces of our national life
and development must not overlook those
New England fireside scenes.

Prayers ended, the " men folks " went
forth to the day's toil. It was hard,
partly from its then rough character,
partly from poverty of appliances. For
the hardest jobs neighbors would join
hands, fighting nature as they had to
fight the Indians, unitedly. Farming
tools, if of iron or steel, as axe, mattock,
spade, and the iron nose for the digger
or the plough, the village blacksmith

240 ENGLISH AMERICA [1700

usually fashioned, as he did the bake-
pan, griddle, crane, and pothooks, for
indoor use. Tables, chairs, cradles, bed
steads, and those straight-backed " set
tles " of which a few may yet be seen,
were either home-made or gotten up by
the village carpenter. Mattresses were at
first of hay, straw, leaves, or rushes.
Before 1700, however, feather beds were
common, and houses and the entire state
of a New England farmer's home had
become somewhat more lordly than the
above picture might indicate. The colo
nists made much use of berries, wild fruits,
bread and milk, game, fish, and shellfish.
The stock wandered in the forests and
about the brooks, to be brought home at
night by the boys, whom the sound of the
cow-bell led. In autumn bushels upon
bushels of nuts were laid by, to serve,
along with dried berries and grapes,
salted fish and venison, as food for the
winter. Every phase and circumstance of
this pioneer life reminded our fathers of
their dependence upon nature and the

i7oo] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 241

Supreme Power behind nature, while at
the same time the continual need and ap
plication of neighbor's co-operation with
neighbor brought out brotherly love in
charming strength and beauty.

But to old New England religion, as a

o o

clerical, public, and organized affair, there
is a far darker side. In the eighteenth
century belief in witchcraft was nearly
universal. In 1683 one Margaret Matron
was tried in Pennsylvania on a charge of
bewitching cows and geese, and placed
under bonds of one hundred pounds for
good behavior. In 1705 Grace Sherwood
was ducked in Virginia for the same
offence. Cases of the kind had occurred
in New York. There was no colony where
the belief in astrology, necromancy, second
sight, ghosts, haunted houses and spots,
love-spells, charms, and peculiar powers
attaching to rings, herbs, etc., did not
prevail. Such credulity was not peculiar
to America, but cursed Europe as well.
It seemed to flourish, if anything, after the
Reformation more than before. Luther

VOL. I. — 16

242 ENGLISH AMERICA [1700

firmly believed in witchcraft. He pro
fessed to have met the Evil One in per
sonal conflict, and to have vanquished him
by the use of an inkstand as missile. Per
haps every land in Europe had laws mak
ing witchcraft a capital crime. One was
enacted in England under Henry VIII.,
another in James I.'s first year, denounc
ing death against all persons " invoking
any evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting
with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or
rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead
bodies from their graves to be used in any
witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment,
or killing or otherwise hurting any person
by such infernal arts." A similar statute
was contained in the " Fundamentals " of
Massachusetts, probably inspired by the
command of Scripture, " Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live." This law, we shall
see, was not a dead letter.

No wonder such a law was of more effect
in New England than anywhere else on
earth. The official religion of the Puri
tans was not only superstitious in general

i7oo] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 243

but gloomy in particular, and most gloomy
in New England. Its central tenet, here
at least, seemed to be that life ought to
furnish no joy, men seeking to "merit
heaven by making earth a hell." Sunday
laws were severe, and rigidly enforced from
six o'clock Saturday evening till the same
hour the next. Not the least work was
allowed unless absolutely necessary, nor
any semblance of amusement. Boys bring
ing home the cows were cautioned to " let
down the bars softly, as it was the Lord's
day." Sunday travellers were arrested and
fined. Men might be whipped for absence
from church. A girl at Plymouth was
threatened exile as a street-walker for smil
ing in meeting. Increase Mather traced
the great Boston fire of 1711 to the sin of
Sunday labor, such as carrying parcels and
baking food. In Newport, some men hav
ing been drowned who, to say good-by to
departing friends, had rowed out to a ship
just weighing anchor, Rev. John Comer
prayed that others might take warning and
" do no more such great wickedness."

244

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1700

Sermons were often two hours long ;
public prayer half an hour. Worse still
was what went by the name of music-
doggerel hymns full of the most sulphur
ous theology, uttered congregationally as
"lined off" by the leader — nasal, dissonant,

Increase Mather.

and discordant in the highest imaginable
degree. The church itself was but a barn,
homely-shaped, bare, and in winter cold as
out-of-doors. At this season men wrapped
their feet in bags, and women stuffed their
muffs with hot stones. Sleepers were
rudely awakened by the tithing-man's baton

1638] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 245

thwacking their heads ; or, if females,
by its fox-tail end brushing their cheeks.
Fast-days were common. Prayer opened
every public meeting, secular as well as
religious. The doctrine of special provi
dences was pressed to a ridiculous extreme.
The devil was believed in no less firmly
than God, and indefinitely great power
ascribed to him. The Catechism — book
second in authority only to the Bible —
contained of his Satanic Majesty a cut,
which children were left, not to say taught,
to suppose as correct a likeness as that
of Cromwell, which crowned the mantels of
so many homes.

In a people thus trained the miracle is
not that witchcraft and superstition did so
much mischief, but so little. Had it not
been for their sturdy Saxon good sense
its results must have proved infinitely more
sad. The first remarkable case of sorcery
in New England occurred at Boston, in
1688. Four children of a pious family
were affected in a peculiar manner, imi
tating the cries of cats and dogs," and com-

246 ENGLISH AMERICA [1688

plaining of pains all over their bodies.
These were the regulation symptoms of
witch-possession, which presumably they
had often heard discussed. An old Irish
serving-woman, indentured to the family,
who already bore the name of a witch,

Cotton Mather.

was charged with having bewitched them,
and executed, the four ministers of Boston
having first held at the house a day of
prayer and fasting.

Young Cotton Mather, grandson of the
distinguished Rev. John Cotton, a man of
vast erudition and fervent piety, was at
this time colleague to his father, Increase

1688] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 247

Mather, as pastor of the Boston North
Church. His imagination had been abnor
mally developed by fasts and vigils, in
which he believed himself to hold uncom
monly close communication with the Al
mighty. His desire to provide new arms
for faith against the growing unbelief of
his time led him to take one of the "be
witched " children to his house, that he
might note and describe the ways of the
devil in her case. The results he soon
after published in his " Memorable Provi
dences Relating to Witchcrafts and Posses
sions." This work admitted no doubt as
to the reality of the demoniac possessions,
which indeed it affected to demonstrate
forever. All the Boston ministers signed
its preface, certifying to its "clear informa
tion " that " both a God and a devil, and
witchcraft" existed. "Nothing too vile,"
it alleged, " can be said of, nothing too
hard can be done to, such a horrible iniquity
as witchcraft is." The publication excited
great attention, and to it in no small meas
ure the ensuing tragedy may be traced.

248

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1692

In February, 1692, three more subjects,
children of Rev. Mr. Parris, minister at
Danvers, then called Salem Village, ex
hibited bad witchcraft symptoms. The
utmost excitement prevailed. Neighboring
clergymen joined the village in fasting and
prayer. A general fast for the colony was

Old Tituba the Indian.

ifojal •/'///•• S.1/./-M //7/(7/( A'.// v 349

ordered. But tin- "devilism," as Cotton
Mather named it, spread instead oi' al>at in*.1,
the children having any number of imi
tators so soon as they became objects of
general notice and sympathy. Old Tituba,
an Indian (-rone, who had served in I 'arris's
family, was the first to he denounced as the
cause. Two other a^ed lemales, one craxy,
the other bed-ridden, were also presently
accused, and alter a little while several
ladies of Harris's church. Whoso uttered
a whisper ol incredulity, oeneral or as to
the blameworthiness of any whom Tarris
called guilty, wa.s instantly indicted with
them.

On April nth, the I Deputy Ciovernor
held in the meeting-house in Salem Vil
lage a court lor a preliminary examination
ol the prisoners. A scene at once ridic
ulous and tragic followed. When they
were brought in, their alleged victims
appeared overcome at their i;a/e, pretend
ini; to be bitten, pinched, scratched, choked,
burned, or pricked by their invisible agency
in revenue lor relusim1 to subscribe to a

250

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1692

covenant with the devil. Some were appar
ently stricken down by the glance of an eye
from one of the culprits, others fainted,
many writhed as in a fit. Tituba was
beaten to make her confess. Others were

Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton.

tortured. Finally all the accused were
thrown into irons. Numbers of accused
persons, assured that it was their only
chance for life, owned up to deeds of which
they must have been entirely innocent.
They had met the devil in the form of a

1692] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 251

small black man, had attended witch sacra
ments, where they renounced their Chris
tian vows, and had ridden through the
air on broomsticks. Such were the con
fessions of poor women who had never in
their lives done any evil except possibly to
tattle.

On June 2d, a special court was held in
Salem for the definite trial. Stoughton,
Lieutenant Governor, a man of small mind
and bigoted temper, was president. The
business began by the condemnation and
hanging of a helpless woman. A jury of
women had found on her person a wart,
which was pronounced to be unquestion
ably a "devil's teat," and her neighbors
remembered that many hens had died,
animals become lame, and carts upset by
her dreadful "devilism." By September
23d, twenty persons had gone to the gal
lows, eight more were under sentence, and
fifty-five had "confessed" and turned
informers as their only hope. The " af
flicted " had increased to fifty. Jails were
crammed with persons under accusation,

252

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1692

and fresh charges of alliance with devils
were brought forward every day.

Some of the wretched victims displayed
great fortitude. Goodman Procter lost his

1692] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT

'53

life by nobly and persistently — vainly as
well, alas ! — maintaining the innocence of
his accused wife. George Burroughs, who
had formerly preached in Salem Village,
was indicted. His physical strength, which
happened to be phenomenal, was adduced
as lent him from the devil. Stoughton
browbeat him through his whole trial.
What sealed his condemnation, however,
was his offer to the jury of a paper quoting
an author who denied the possibility of
witchcraft. His fervent prayers when on
the scaffold, and especially his correct ren
dering of the Lord's Prayer, shook the
minds of many. They argued that no
witch could have gotten through those
holy words correctly — a test upon which
several had been condemned. Cotton
Mather, present at the gallows, restored
the crowd to faith by reminding them that
the devil had the power to dress up like
an angel of light. Rebecca Nurse, a
woman of unimpeachable character hither
to, unable from partial deafness to under
stand, so as to explain, the allegations

254 ENGLISH AMERICA [1692

made against her, was convicted notwith
standing every proof in her favor.

Reaction now began. Public opinion
commenced to waver. No one knew whose
turn to be hanged would come next.
Emboldened by their fatal success, accusers
whispered of people in high places as
leagued with the Evil One. An Andover
minister narrowly escaped death. The
Beverly minister, Hale, one of the most
active in denouncing witches, was aghast
when his own wife was accused. Two
sons of Governor Bradstreet were obliged
to flee for their lives, one for refusing, as
a magistrate, to issue any more warrants,
the other charged with bewitching a dog.
Several hurried to New York to escape
conviction. The property of such was
seized by their towns. A reign of terror
prevailed.

People slowly awoke to the terrible trav
esty of justice which was going on. Mag
istrates were seen to have overlooked the
most flagrant instances of falsehood and
contradiction on the part of both accusers

1692] THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 255

and accused, using the baseless hypothesis
that the devil had warped their senses.
The disgusting partiality shown in the
accusations was disrelished, as was the
resort that had been had to torture. One
poor old man of eighty they crushed to
death because he would plead guilty to
nothing. The authorities quite disregarded
the fact that every one of the self-accusations
had been made in order to escape punish
ment. These considerations effected a
revolution in the minds of most people.
Remonstrances were presented to the
courts, securing reprieve for those under
sentence of death at Salem. This so irri
tated the despicable Stoughton that he
resigned.

The forwardness of the ministers therein
turned many against the persecution. After
the first victims had fallen at Salem, Gov
ernor Phips took their advice whether or
not to proceed. Cotton Mather indited
the reply. It thankfully acknowledges
" the success which the merciful God has
given to the sedulous and assiduous endeav-

256 ENGLISH AMERICA [1693

ors of our honorable rulers to defeat the
abominable witchcrafts which have been
committed in the country, humbly praying
that the discovery of those mysterious and
mischievous wickednesses maybe perfected."
It is pleasant to note, after all, the minis
ters' advice to the civil rulers not to rely
too much on "the devil's authority"- — on
the evidence, that is, of those possessed.
The court heeded this injunction all too
little, but by and by it had weight with the
public, who judged that, as the trials ap
peared to be proceeding on devil's evidence
alone, the farce ought to cease. The
vSuperior Court met in Boston, April 25,
1693, and the grand jury declined to find
any more bills against persons accused of
sorcery. King William vetoed the Witch
craft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all
the prisoners were discharged.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MIDDLE COLONIES

THE English conquest of New Nether-
land from the Dutch speedily followed the
Stuarts' return to the throne. Cromwell
had mooted an attack on Dutch America,
and, as noticed in Chapter I., Connecticut's
charter of 1662 extended that colony to
include the Dutch lands. England based
her claim to the territory on alleged priority
of discovery, but the real motives were the
value of the Hudson as an avenue for trade,
and the desire to range her colonies along
the Atlantic coast in one unbroken line.
The victory was not bloody, nor was it
offensive to the Dutch themselves, who in
the matter of liberties could not lose.
King Charles had granted the conquered
tract to his brother, the Duke of York,
subsequently James II., and it was in his

VOL. I. — 17

258 ENGLISH AMERICA [1686

honor christened with its present name of
New York.

The Duke's government was not popular,
especially as it ordered the Dutch land-
patents to be renewed — for money, of
course ; and in 1673, war again existing
between England and Holland, the Dutch
recovered their old possession. They held
it however for only fifteen months, since
at the Peace of 1674 the two belligerent
nations mutually restored all the posts
which they had won.

The reader already has some idea of Sir
Edmond Andros's rule in America. New
York was the first to feel this, coming
under the gentleman's governorship imme
diately on being the second time surren
dered to England. Such had been the
political disorder in the province, that
Andros's headship, stern as it was, proved
beneficial. He even, for a time, 1683-86,
reluctantly permitted an elective legislature,
though discontinuing it when the legislatures
of New England were suppressed. This
taste of freedom had its effect afterward.

1690] THE MIDDLE COLONIES 259

When news of the Revolution of 1688 in
England reached New York, Andros was

o

in Boston. Nicholson, Lieutenant-Gover
nor, being a Catholic and an absolutist, and
the colony now in horror of all Catholics
through fear of French invasion from Can
ada, Jacob Leisler, a German adventurer,
partly anticipating, partly obeying the pop
ular wish, assumed to function in Nichol
son's stead. All the aristocracy, English
or Dutch, and nearly all the English of the
lower rank were against him. Leisler was
passionate and needlessly bitter toward
Catholics, yet he meant well. He viewed
his office as only transitory, and stood ready
to surrender it so soon as the new king's
will could be learned ; but when Sloughter
arrived with commission as governor,
Leisler's foes succeeded in compassing
his execution for treason. This unjust and
cruel deed began a long feud between the
popular and the aristocratic party in the

colony.

Erom this time till the American Revolu
tion New York continued a province of the

260

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1690

Sloughter signing Leisler's Death Warrant.

Crown. Royal governor succeeded royal
governor, some of them better, some worse.
Of the entire line Bellomont was the most
worthy official, Cornbury the least so.
One of the problems which chiefly worried

i7oo] THE MIDDLE COLONIES 261

all of them was how to execute the naviga
tion acts, which, evaded everywhere, were
here unscrupulously defied. Another care
of the governors, in which they succeeded
but very imperfectly, was to establish the
English Church in the colony. A third
was the disfranchisement of Catholics.
This they accomplished, the legislature
concurring, and the disability continued
during the entire colonial period.

Hottest struggle of all occurred over the
question of the colony's right of self-
taxation. The democracy stood for this
with the utmost firmness, and even the
higher classes favored rather than opposed.
The governors, Cornbury and Lovelace,
most frantically, but in vain, expostulated,
scolded, threatened, till at last it became
admitted by law in the colony that no tax
whatever could, on any pretext, be levied
save by act of the people's representatives.

Dutch America, it will be remembered,
had reached southward to the Delaware
River, and this lower portion passed with
the rest to the Duke of York in 1664. The

262

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1700

territory between the Hudson and the Del
aware, under the name of New Jersey, he
made over to Lord Berkeley and Sir George
Carteret, proprietaries, who favored the
freest institutions, civil and religious. The

Seal of the Carterets.

population was for long very sparse and,
as it grew, very miscellaneous. Dutch,
Swedes, English, Quakers, and Puritans
from New England were represented.

After the English recovery Berkeley dis
posed of his undivided half of the province,

i7oo]

THE MIDDLE COLONIES

263

subsequently set off as West Jersey, to one
Bylling, a Quaker, who in a little time
assigned it to Lawrie, Lucas, Penn, and
other Quakers. West Jersey became as
much a Quaker paradise as Pennsylvania.
Penn with eleven of his brethren, also
bought, of Carter-
et's heirs, East
Jersey, but here
Puritan rather
than Quaker influ
ence prevailed.

The Jersey
plantations came
of course under
Andros, and after
his fall its proprietors did not recover their
political authority. For twelve years, while
they were endeavoring to do this, partial
anarchy cursed the province, and at length
in 1702 they surrendered their rights to the
Crown, the Jerseys, now made one, becom
ing directly subject to Queen Anne. The
province had its own legislature and, till
1741, the same governors as New York. It

Seal of East Jersey.

264

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1700

also had mainly the same political vicissi
tudes, and with the same result.

William Penn, the famous Quaker, re
ceived the proprietorship of Pennsylvania
in payment of a claim for sixteen thousand
pounds against the English Government.
This had been left him by his father, Sir
William Penn, a distinguished naval com-

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MCCUiWlBCtlOCfiCCCG UfUti

Wampum received by Penn in Commemoration of the Indian Treaty.

mander in the Dutch war of 1665—67, when
he had borne chief part in the conquest
of Jamaica.

Williarr. Penn was among the most culti
vated men of his time, polished by study and
travel, deeply read in law and philosophy.
He Jiad fortune, and many friends at court,
including Charles II. himself. He needed

i7oo] THE MIDDLE COLONIES 267

but to conform, and great place was his.
But conform he would not. True to the
inner light, braving the scoffs of all his
friends, expelled from Oxford University,
beaten from his own father's door, impris
oned now nine months in London Tower,
now six in Newgate, this heroic spirit per
sistently went the Quaker way. In despair
of securing in England freedom for dis
tressed consciences he turned his thoughts
toward America, there to try his " holy
experiment."

The charter from Charles II. was drawn
by Penn's own hand and was nobly liberal.
It ordained perfect religious toleration for
all Christians, and forbade taxation save
by the provincial assembly or the English
Parliament. Under William and Mary,
greatly to his grief, Penn was forced to
sanction the penal laws against Catholics ;
but they were most leniently administered,
which brought upon the large-minded pro
prietary much trouble with the home gov
ernment.

As Pennsylvania, owing to the righteous

268

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1700

and loving procedure of Penn toward them,
suffered nothing from the red men to the
west, so was it fortunately beyond Andres's
jurisdiction on the east. Once, from 1692,
for two years, the land was snatched from
Penn and placed under a royal commission.

The Treaty Monument, Kensington.

Returning to England in 1684, after a two
years' sojourn in America to get his colony
started, the Quaker chief became intimate
and a favorite with James II., devotedly
supporting his Declaration of Indulgence
toward Catholics as well as toward all Prot
estant dissenters. He tried hard but vainly

i7oo] THE MIDDLE COLONIES 269

to win William and Mary to the same policy.
This attitude of his cost him dear, render
ing him an object of suspicion to the men
now in power in England. Twice was he
accused of treasonable correspondence with
the exiled James II., though never proved
guilty. From 1699 to 1701 he was in
America again, thereafter residing in Eng
land till his death in 1718. He had literally
given all for his colony, his efforts on its
behalf having been to him, so he wrote in
1710, a cause of grief, trouble, and poverty.

But the colony itself was amazingly pros
perous. There were internal feuds, mainly
petty, some serious. George Keith griev
ously divided the Quakers by his teachings
against slavery, going to law, or service as
magistrates on the part of Quakers, thus
implying that only infidels or churchmen
could be the colony's officials.

Fletcher's governorship in 1693-94, under
the royal commission, evoked continual op
position, colonial privileges remaining intact
in spite of him. The people from time to
time subjected their ground-law to changes,

270

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1700

only to render it a fitter instrument of free
dom. In everything save the hereditary
function of the proprietary, it was demo
cratic. For many years even the governor's
council was elective. The colony grew, im-

The Penn Mansion in Philadelphia.

migrants crowding in from nearly every
European country, and wealth multiplied to
correspond.

We have, dating from 1698, a history of
Pennsylvania by one Gabriel Thomas, full
of interesting information. Philadelphia
was already a "noble and beautiful city,"

i7oo] THE MIDDLE COLONIES 271

containing above 2,000 houses, most of
them " stately," made of brick ; three stores,
and besides a town house, a market house,
and several schools. Three fairs were held
there yearly, arid two weekly markets, which
it required twenty fat bullocks, besides
many sheep, calves, and hogs, to supply.
The city had large trade to New York,
New England, Virginia, West India, and
Old England. Its exports were horses,
pipe-staves, salt meats, bread-stuffs, poultry,
and tobacco ; its imports, fir, rum, sugar,
molasses, silver, negroes, salt, linen, house
hold goods, etc. Wages were three times
as high as in England or Wales. All sorts
of " very good paper" were made at Ger-
mantown, besides linen, druggets, crapes,
camlets, serges, and other woollen cloths.
All religious confessions were represented.
In 1712, such his poverty, the good pro
prietary was willing to sell to the Crown,
but as he insisted upon maintenance of
the colonists' full rights, no sale occurred.
English bigots and revenue officials would
gladly have annulled his charter, but his

272 ENGLISH AMERICA [1700

integrity had gotten him influence among
English statesmen, which shielded the heri
tage he had left even when he was gone.
It is particularly to be noticed that till
our Independence Delaware was most inti
mately related to Pennsylvania. Of Dela
ware the fee simple belonged not to Penn,
but to the Duke of York, who had con
quered it from the Dutch, as they from the
Swedes. Penn therefore governed here,
not as proprietary but as the Duke's ten
ant. In 1690-92, and from 1702, Delaware
enjoyed a legislature by itself, though its
governors were appointed by Penn or his
heirs during the entire colonial period.

CHAPTER V.

MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA

THE establishment of Charles II. as king
fully restored Lord Baltimore as proprietary
in Maryland, and for a long time the colony
enjoyed much peace and prosperity. In
1660 it boasted twelve thousand inhabitants,
in 1665 sixteen thousand, in 1676 twenty
thousand. Plantation life was universal,
there being no town worthy the name till
Baltimore, which, laid out in 1739, grew
very slowly. Tobacco was the main pro
duction, too nearly the only one, the planters
sometimes actually suffering for food, so
that the raising of cereals needed to be en
forced by law. For long the weed was also
the money of the province, not disused for
this even when paper currency was intro
duced, being found the less fluctuating in
value of the two. Partly actual over-

VOL. I. — 18

274

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1675

production and partly the navigation acts,
forcing all sales to be effected through
England, fatally lowered the price, and
Maryland with Virginia tried to establish
a " trust" to regulate the output.

Charles, Second Lord Baltimore.

In its incessant and on one occasion
bloody boundary disputes with Pennsyl
vania and Delaware, Maryland had to give
in and suffer its northern and eastern
boundaries to be shortened.

1689] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 275

One of the most beautiful traits of early
Maryland was its perfect toleration in re
ligion. Practically neither Pennsylvania
nor Rhode Island surpassed it in this.
Much hostility to the Quakers existed,
yet they had here exceptional privileges,
and great numbers from Virginia and the
North utilized these. All sorts of dis
senters indeed flocked hither out of all
European countries, including many Hu
guenots, and were made welcome to all
the rights and blessings of the land.

But from the accession of Charles Cal-
vert, the third Lord Baltimore, in 1675,
the colony witnessed continual agitation in
favor of establishing the English Church.
False word reached the Privy Council that
immorality was rife in the colony owing to
a lack of religious instruction, and that
Catholics were preferred in its offices.
This movement succeeded, in spite of its
intrinsic demerit, by passing itself off as
part of the rising in favor of William and
Mary in 1688-89.

James II. had shown no favor to Mary-

276 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

land. If its proprietary, as a Catholic,
pleased him, its civil and religious liberty
offended him more. He was hence not
popular here, and the Marylanders would
readily have proclaimed the new monarchs
but for the accidental failure of the pro
prietary's commands to this effect to reach
them. This gave occasion for one Coode,
with a few abettors, to form, in April, 1689,
an " Association in Arms for the Defence
of the Protestant Religion, and for Assert
ing the Right of King William and Queen
Mary to the Province of 'Maryland." The
exaggerated representations of these con
spirators prevailed in England. The pro
prietary, retaining his quit rents and export
duty, was deprived of his political preroga
tives. Maryland became a Crown province,
Sir Lionel Copley being the first royal gov
ernor, and the Church of England received
establishment therein.

The new ecclesiastical rule did not
oppress Protestant dissenters, though very
severe on Catholics, whom it was supposed
necessary, here as all over America, to

1660] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 277

keep under, lest they should rise in favor
of James, 1 1., or his son the Pretender.

The third Lord Baltimore died in 1714-
15. The proprietaries after this being
Protestants, were intrusted again with
their old political headship. By this time
a spirit of independence and self-assertion
had grown up among the citizens, enforc
ing very liberal laws, and the vices of
the sixth Lord, succeeding in 1751, made
his subjects more than willing that he
should, as he did, close the proprietary
line.

Virginia, passionately loyal, at first
gloried in the Restoration. This proved
premature. It was found that the purely
selfish Charles II. cared no more for Vir
ginia than for Massachusetts. The Com
monwealth's men were displaced from
power. Sir William Berkeley again be
came governor, this time, however, by the
authority of the assembly. A larger feel
ing of independence from England had
sprung up in the colony in consequence
of recent history at home and in the

278 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

mother-land. It was developed still fur
ther by the events now to be detailed.

The Old Dominion contained at this time
40,000 people, 6,000 being white servants
and 2,000 negro slaves, located mainly upon
the lower waters of the Rappahannock,
York, and James Rivers. Between 1650
and 1670, through large immigration from
the old country, the population had in
creased from 15,000 to 40,000, some of the
first families of the State in subsequent
times arriving at this juncture. About
eighty ships of commerce came each year
from Great Britain, besides many from
New England. Virginia herself built no
ships and owned few ; but she could muster
eight thousand horse, had driven the Indians
far into the interior, possessed the capacity
for boundless wealth, and had begun to ex
perience a decided sense of her own rights
and importance. The last fact showed itself
in Bacon's Rebellion, which broke out in
1676, just one hundred years before the
Declaration of Independence. The causes
of the insurrection were not far to seek.

1673] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 279

The navigation acts were a sore griev
ance to Virginia as to the other colonies.
Under Cromwell they had not been much
enforced, and the Virginians had traded
freely with all who came. Charles enforced
them with all possible rigor, confining Vir
ginia's trade to England and English ships
manned by Englishmen. This gave Eng
land a grinding monopoly of tobacco, Vir
ginia's sole export, making the planters
commercially the slaves of the home gov
ernment and of English traders. Duties
on the weed were high, and mercilessly
collected without regard to lowness of
price. All supplies from abroad also had
to be purchased in England, at prices set
by English sellers. Even if from other
parts of Europe, they must come through
England, thus securing her a profit at
Virginia's expense.

This was not the worst. The colonial
government had always been abused for
the ends of worthless office-holders from
England. Now it was farmed out more
offensively than ever. In 1673 Charles II.

280 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

donated Virginia to two of his favorites,
Lords Arlington and Culpeper, to be its
proprietaries like Penn in Pennsylvania
and Baltimore in Maryland. They were
to have all the quit rents and other rev
enues, the nomination of ministers for
parishes, the right of appointing public
officers, the right to own and sell all
public or escheated lands : in a word, they
now owned Virginia. This shabby treat
ment awoke the most intense rage in so
proud a people. The king relented, re
voked his donation, made out and was
about to send a new charter. But it was
too late : rebellion had already broken out.
The Indians having made some attacks
on the upper plantations, one Nathaniel
Bacon, a spirited young gentleman of
twenty-eight, recently from England, ap
plied to Sir William Berkeley for a com
mission against them. The governor
declined to give it, fearing, in the present
ex'cited condition of the colony, to have a
body of armed men abroad. Bacon, en
raged, extorts the commission by force.

1676] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 281

The result is civil war in the colony. The
rebels are for a time completely victorious.
Berkeley is driven to Accomac, on the
eastern shore of the Chesapeake, but, suc-

Reverend Dr. Blair, First President of William and Mary College.

ceeding in capturing a fleet sent to oppose
him, he returns with this and captures
Jamestown. Beaten by Bacon in a pitched
battle, he again retires to Accomac, and the
colony comes fully under the power of his

282 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

antagonist, the colonists agreeing even to
fight England should it interpose on the
governor's side, when a decisive change in
affairs is brought about by the rebel leader's
death.

The rebellion was now easily subdued,
but it had soured and hardened old Gov
ernor Berkeley's spirit. Twenty-three in
all were executed for participation in the
movement. Charles II. remarked: " That
old fool has hanged more men in that
naked country than I for the murder of
my father."

After Bacon's Rebellion the colonial
annals show but a dull succession of royal
governors, with few events specially inter
esting. Under the governorship of Lord
Howard of Effingham, which began in 1684,
great excitement prevailed in Virginia lest
King James II. should subvert the English
Church there and make Catholicism dom
inant, which indeed might possibly have
occurred but for James's abdication in 1688.

Under Governor Nicholson, from 1690,
the capital was removed from Jamestown to

1690] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 283

Williamsburg, and the College of William
and Mary founded,- its charter elating from
1693. The Attorney-General, Seymour,
opposed this project on the ground that
the money was needed for " better pur-

George Monk, Duke of Albemarle.

poses" than educating clergymen. Rev.
Dr. Blair, agent and advocate of the en
dowment, pleading : " The people have
souls to be saved," Seymour retorted :
" Damn your souls, make tobacco." But
Blair persisted and succeeded, himself be
coming first president of the college. The

284 ENGLISH AMERICA [1710

initial commencement exercises took place
in 1700.

Governor Spotswood, who came in 1710,
did much for Virginia. He built the first
iron furnaces in America, introduced wine-
culture, for which he imported skilled Ger
mans, and greatly interested himself in the
civilization of the Indians. He was the
earliest to explore the Shenandoah Valley.
It was also by his energy that the famous
pirate " Blackbeard " was captured and ex
ecuted. Lieutenant Maynard, sent with
two ships to hunt him, attacked and boarded
the pirate vessel in Pamlico Sound, 1718.
A tough fight at close quarters ensued.
Blackbeard was shot dead, his crew crying
for quarter. Thirteen of the men were
hung at Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull,
made into a drinking-cup, is preserved to
this day. The great corsair's fate, Benjamin
Franklin, then a printer's devil in Boston,
celebrated in verse.

Carolina was settled partly from England,
France, and the Barbadoes, and partly from
New England ; but mainly from Virginia,

1663] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 285

which colony furthermore furnished most
of its political ideas.

In March, 1663, Carolina was constituted
a territory, extending from 36° north lati
tude southward to the river San Matheo,

Lord Shaftesbury.

and assigned to a company of seven dis
tinguished proprietaries, including General
Monk, who had been created Duke of
Albemarle, and John Locke's patron, the
famous Lord Ashley Cooper, subsequently
Earl of Shaftesbury. Governor Sir William

286

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1720

Berkeley, of Virginia, was also one of the
proprietaries.

Locke drew up for the province a minute

Seal of the Proprietors of Carolina.

feudal constitution, but it was too cumber
some to work. Rule by the proprietaries
proved radically bad. They were ignorant,
callous to wrongs done by their governors,
and indifferent to everything save their own
profits. Many of the settlers too were
turbulent and criminals, fugitives from the
justice of other colonies. The difficulty
was aggravated by Indian and Spanish

1720] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 287

wars, by negro slavery, so profitable for
rice culture, especially in South Carolina, by
strife between dissenters and churchmen,
by the question of revenue, and by that of
representation.

A proprietary party and a larger popular
party were continually at feud, not seldom

John Locke

with arms, support of the Church allying
itself mainly with the former, dissent with
the latter. Zealots for the Church wished

288 ENGLISH AMERICA [1730

to exclude dissenters from the assembly.
Their opponents would keep Huguenot
immigrants, whom the favor of the proprie
taries rendered unwelcome, entirely from
the franchise. The popular party passed
laws for electing representatives in every
county instead of at Charleston alone, and
for revenue tariffs to pay the debt entailed
by war. The proprietaries vetoed both.
They even favored the pirates who harried
the coast. Civil commotions were frequent
and growth slow. Interference by the Crown
was therefore most happy. From the time
the Carolinas passed into royal hands, 1 729,
remarkable prosperity attended them both.

Assuming charge of Carolina, the Crown
reserved to itself the Spanish frontier, and
here, in 1732, it settled Oglethorpe, the
able and unselfish founder of Georgia,
under the auspices of an organization in
form much like a mercantile company, but
benevolent in aim, whose main purpose was
to open a home for the thousands of
Englishmen who were in prison for debt.
Many Scotch and many Austrians also

1730] MARYLAND, VIRGINIA, CAROLINA 289

came. Full civil liberty was promised to
all, religious liberty to all but papists.

litical strife was warm here, too, particularly
respecting the admission of rum and slaves.
Government by the corporators, though

VOL. I. — 19

290 ENGLISH AMERICA [1752

well-meaning, was ill-informed and a failure,
and would have been ruinous to the colony
but for Oglethorpe's genius and exertions.
To the advantage of all, therefore, on the
lapse of the charter in 1752, Georgia, like
the Carolinas, assumed the status of a royal
colony.

James Oglethorpe.

CHAPTER VI.

GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE
COLONIES

THE political life, habits, and forms fa
miliar to our fathers were such as their
peculiar surroundings and experience had
developed out of English originals. .This
process and its results form an interesting
study.

The political unit at the South was the
parish ; in the North it was the town. Jury
trial prevailed in all the colonies. Local
self-government was vigorous everywhere,
yet the most so in the North. The town
regulated its affairs, such as the schools,
police, roads, the public lands, the poor,
and in Massachusetts and Connecticut also
religion, at first by pure mass meetings
where each citizen represented himself and
which were both legislative and judicial in

294 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

function, then by combining these meetings
in various ways with the agency of select
men. Where and so soon as a colony came
to embrace several towns, representative
machinery was set in motion and a colonial
legislature formed, having two chambers
nearly everywhere, like Parliament. The
county, with the same character as at pres
ent, was instituted later than the oldest
towns and parishes, but itself subsequently
became, in thinly settled parts, the unit of
governmental organization and political ac
tion, being divided into towns or parishes
only gradually. Voting was subject to a
property qualification, in some colonies to
a religious one also ; but no nobility of
blood or title got foothold.

The relation of the colonial governments
to England is a far more perplexing matter.
From the preceding chapters it appears
that we may distinguish the colonies, if we
come down to about 1750, as either (i) self-
governing or charter colonies, in which
liberty was most complete and subjection
to England little more than nominal ; and

i75o] GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS 295

(2) non-self-governing, ruled, theoretically
at any rate, in considerable measure from
outside themselves. Rhode Island and
Connecticut made up the former class. Of
the latter there were two groups, the royal
or provincial, including New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey,
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and
the proprietary, viz., Pennsylvania, Mary
land, and Delaware.

Yet we are to bear in mind that many
important constitutional and governmental
changes had occurred by 1750. Massachu
setts, as we have seen, had ceased to be
self-governing as at first, yet it retained a
charter which conferred large liberty. All
the provincial colonies began as proprietary,
and all the proprietary were for a time pro
vincial.

Under Andros, New England stretched
from the St. Croix to Delaware Bay. After
1689 the tendency in all parts of the country
was strong toward civil freedom, which,
favored by the changes and apathy of pro
prietaries and the ignorance and quarrels of

296 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

the English ministry, gradually rendered the
other colonies in effect about as well off in
this respect as Rhode Island and Connect
icut.

But unfortunately the legal limits and
meaning of this freedom were never deter
mined. Had they been, our Revolution
need not have come. Monarchs continually
attempted to stretch hither the royal pre
rogative, but how far this was legal was not
then, and never can be, decided. The con
stitutional scope of a monarch's prerogative
in England itself was one of the great ques
tions of the seventeenth century, and re
mained serious and unsettled through the
eighteenth. Applied to America the prob
lem became angrier still, partly because
giving a charter — and the colonies were all
founded on such gift — was an act of pre
rogative.

English lawyers never doubted that acts
of Parliament were valid in the colonies.
The colonists opposed both the king's and
the Parliament's pretensions, and held their
own legislatures to be coordinate with the

1750] GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS 297

Houses at Westminster. They claimed as
rights the protection of habeas corpus, free
dom from taxation without their consent,
and all the Great Charter's guarantees. It
was the habit of English theorizing on the
subject to allow them these, if at all, as of
grace. Repudiating the pretence that they
were represented in Parliament, they like
wise denied all wish to be so, but desired
to have colonial legislatures recognized as
concurrent with the English — each colony
joined to the mother-country by a sort of
personal union, or through some such tie
as exists between England and her colonies
to-day. Massachusetts theorists used as a
valid analogy the relation of ancient Nor
mandy to the French kings. Though no
longer venturing to do so at home, mon-
archs freely vetoed legislation in all the
colonies except Rhode Island and Connect
icut. It was held that even these colonies
were after all somehow subject to Eng
land's oversight.

On the subject of taxation there was
continual dispute, misunderstanding, recrim-

298 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

ination. The colonies did not object to
providing for their own defence. They
were willing to do this under English direc
tion if asked, not commanded. Direct taxa
tion for England's behoof was never once
consented to by America, and till late never
thought of by England. The English navi
gation laws, however, though amounting to
taxation of America in aid of England, and
continually evaded as unjust, were allowed
by the colonies' legislative acts, and never
seriously objected to in any formal way.

CHAPTER VII.

SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES

AMERICAN society rose out of mere un-
titled humanity ; monarchy, guilds, priests,
and all aristocracy of a feudal nature having
been left behind in Europe. The year 1700
found in all the American colonies together
some 300,000 people. They were distrib
uted about as follows : New England had
115,000; New York, 30,000; New Jersey,
15,000; Pennsylvania and Delaware, 20,-
ooo ; Maryland, 35,000; Virginia, 70,000;
the Carolina country, 15,000. Perhaps
50,000 were negro slaves, of whom, say,
10,000 were held north of Mason and
Dixon's line. What is now New York
City had, in 1697, 4,302 inhabitants.

Passing on to 1 754, we find the white
population of New England increased to
425,000 ; that of the middle colonies, includ-

300 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

ing Maryland, to 457,000; that of Virginia,
the Carolinas, and Georgia, to 283,000.
Massachusetts alone now had 207,000 ;
Rhode Island, 35,000; Connecticut, 133,-
ooo ; New York State (1756), 83,744.
There were now not far from 263,000
negroes, of whom 14,000 lived in New
England, 4,500 in Rhode Island. The
total population of the thirteen colonies
amounted to nearly a million and a half.
At this time Philadelphia about equalled
Boston in size, each having 25,000 inhab
itants. At the Revolution Boston had
grown to be the larger. New York, with
from 15,000 to 18,000, constituted the centre
of trade and of politics. The city and
county of New York together numbered
13,046 inhabitants in 1756; 21,862 in 1771 ;
23,614 in 1786. The whole State, in 1771,
had 146,144. Connecticut, in 1774, had
197,856. There are said to have been, so
late as 1763, woods where the New York
City Hall now stands.

From North to South the population
decreased in density, but it increased in

i75o] SOCIAL CULTURE 301

heterogeneity and non-English elements,
and in illiteracy. The South had also the
stronger aristocratic feeling. Slaves, as the
above figures show, were far more numer
ous in that section. Their condition was
also worse there.

A large proportion of the white popula
tion everywhere was of Saxon-Teutonic
blood. The colonial leaders, and many
others, at least in the North, were men
who would have been eminent in England
itself. Not a few New England theolo
gians and lawyers were peers to the ablest
of their time. Numbers of the common
people read, reflected, debated. While pro
foundly religious, the colonists, being nearly
all Protestants, were bold and progressive
thinkers in every line, prizing discussion,
preferring to settle questions by rational
methods rather than through authority and
tradition. We have observed that there
are exceptions to this rule, like the treat
ment of Roger Williams, but they were
exceptions. The colonists possessed in
eminent degree energy, determination,

302

ENGLISH AMERICA

power of patient endurance and sacrifice.
Their political genius, too, was striking in
itself, and it becomes surprising if one com
pares Germany, in the unspeakable distrac-

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

tion of the Thirty Years' War, with America
at the same period, 1618-1648, successfully
solving by patience and debate the very
problems which were Germany's despair.

In all the southern colonies the English
Church was established, a majority of the

SOCIAL CULTURE

303

people its members, its clergy supported
by tithes and glebe. William and Mary
secured it a sort of establishment also in
New York and Maryland. Yet at no mo-

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

ment of the colonial period was there a
bishop in America. No church building
was consecrated with episcopal rites, no
resident of America taken into orders
without going to London.1 Even in Vir-

1 See, for these facts, The Century for May, 1888.

304 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

ginia, till a very late colonial period, the
clergy retained many Puritan forms. Some
would not read the Common Prayer. For
more than a hundred years the surplice
was apparently unknown there, sacraments
administered without the proper ornaments
and vessels, parts of the liturgy omitted,
marriages, baptisms, churchings, and funer
als solemnized in private houses. In some
parishes, so late as 1724, the communion
was partaken sitting. Excellent as were
many of the clergymen, there were some
who never preached, and not a few even
bore an ill name. It was worst in Mary
land, and " bad as a Maryland parson "
became a proverb. The yearly salary in
the best Virginia parishes was tobacco of
about ;£ioo value.

The Carolina clergy at first formed a
superior class, as nearly all the early min
isters were men carefully selected and sent
out from England by the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel. Here there
was special interest in the religious welfare
of the slaves. All over the South the

i75o] SOCIAL CULTURE 305

Church ministers owed much to competition
with those of sects, especially those of the
Presbyterians, to which body belonged many
of the Scotch and Irish immigrants after
1700. Dissent was dominant everywhere
at the North. A vast majority of the
people even in New York were dissenters,
though the Episcopal clergy there success
fully resisted all efforts against the Church
tax, notwithstanding the fact that the same
injustice in Massachusetts and Connecticut
oppressed their brethren in those colonies.
The New York clergy also fought every
sort of liberal law, as to enable dissenting
bodies of Christians to hold property. It
was in good degree this attitude of theirs
that filled the country, Virginia too, with
such hatred of bishops.

But this spirit was fully matched by that
of the Independent ministers in New Eng
land. Their dissent was aggressive, perse
cuting, puritanical. Meeting-houses were
cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal
only. Religious teaching and the laws it
procured, foolishly assumed to regulate

VOL. I. — 2O

ENGLISH AMERICA

all the acts of life. Extravagance was
denounced and fined. In 1750, the Massa
chusetts Assembly forbade theatres as
" likely to encourage immorality and im-

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

piety." Rhode Island took similar action
in 1762.

The ministers of Boston viewed bishops
almost as emissaries of the devil. Herein
in fact lay the primary, some have thought
the deepest and most potent, cause of the

SOCIAL CULTURE

3°7

Revolution, since kings and the bishops
of London incessantly sought to establish
Anglicanism in Massachusetts, and English
politicians deemed it outrageous that con-

Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.

formists should be denied any of that col
ony's privileges. For some time, under
William and Mary's charter, in this prov
ince where Congregationalism had till now
had everything its own way, only Church
clergymen could celebrate marriage. In

308 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

New York and Maryland, too, hostility to
the establishment greatly stimulated dis
loyalty. This was true even in Anglican
Virginia, where the Church found it no
easier to keep power than it was in Massa
chusetts to get power, and where the clergy
were unpopular, concerned more for tithes
than for souls.

Colleges were founded early in several
colonies. Harvard dates from 1638 ; Wil
liam and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693 ; Yale,
from 1701 ; the College of New Jersey, from
1746, its old Nassau Hall, built in 1756 and
named in honor of William III. of the
House of Nassau, being then the largest
structure in British America. The Uni
versity of Pennsylvania dates from 1753;
King's College, now Columbia, from 1 754 ;
Rhode Island College, now Brown Univer
sity, from 1764. Educational facilities in
general varied greatly with sections, being
miserable in the southern colonies, fair in
the central, excellent in the northern. In
Virginia, during the period now under our
survey, schools were almost unknown. In

i75o] SOCIAL CULTURE 309

Maryland, from 1728, a free school was
established by law in each county. These
were the only such schools in the South
before 1770. Philadelphia and New York
had good schools by 1 700 ; rural Pennsyl
vania none of any sort till 1750, then only
the poorest. A few New York and New
Jersey towns of New England origin had
free schools before the Revolution. Many
Southern planters sent their sons to school
in England. In popular education New
England led not only the continent but the
world, there being a school-house, often
several, in each town. Every native adult
in Massachusetts and Connecticut was able
to read and write. In this matter Rhode
Island was far behind its next neighbors.

Newspapers were distributed much as
schools were. The first printing-press was
set up at Cambridge in 1639. The first
newspaper, Public k Occurrences Foreign and
Domestic, was started in Boston in 1690.
The first permanent newspaper, the Boston
News Letter, began in 1704, and it had a
Boston and a Philadelphia rival in 1719.

3io

ENGLISH AMERICA

The Maryland Gazette was started at Annap
olis in 1727, a weekly at Williamsburg, Va.,
in 1736. In 1740 there were eleven news
papers in all in the colonies : one each
in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia

James Logan.

(from 1736), three in Pennsylvania, one of
them German, and five in Boston. The
Connecticut Gazette was started at New
Haven in 1755 ; The Summary, at New Lon
don in 1758. The Rhode Island Gazette
was begun by James Franklin, September

i75o] SOCIAL CULTURE 311

27, 1732, but was not permanent. The
Providence Gazette and Coimtry Journal put
forth its first issue October 20, 1762. In
1775, Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth
had each its newspaper. The first daily in
the country, the Pennsylvania Packet, began
in i 784.

Other literature of American origin flour
ished in New England nearly alone. It
consisted of sermons, social and political
tracts, poetry, history, and memoirs. The
clergy were the chief but not the sole au
thors. Of readers, New York, Philadelphia,
and Charleston had many. Much reading
matter came from England. Charleston
enjoyed a public library from i 700. About
1750 there were several others. That left
to Philadelphia in 1751, by James Logan,
comprised 4,000 volumes.

William and Mary had established a
postal system for America, placing Thomas
Neale, Esquire, at its head. The service
hardly became a system till 1738. In or
dinary weather a post-rider would receive
the Philadelphia mail at the Susquehannah

312 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

River on Saturday evening, be at Annapolis
on Monday, reach the Potomac Tuesday
night, on Wednesday arrive at New Post,
near Fredericksburg, and by Saturday even
ing at Williamsburg, whence, once a month,
the mail went still farther south, to Eden-

King William.

ton, N. C. Thus a letter was just a week
in transit between Philadelphia and the
capital of Virginia. In New England, from
here to New York, and between New York
and Philadelphia, despatch was much better.
The learned professions also were best

i75o] SOCIAL CULTURE 313

patronized and had the ablest personnel in
New England, where all three, but particu
larly the clergy, were strong and honored.
Outside of New England, till 1750, lawyers
and physicians, especially in the country
parts, were poorly educated and little re-

Queen Mary.

spected. Each formidable disease had the
people at its mercy. Diphtheria, then
known as the throat disease, swept through
the land once in about thirty years. Small
pox was another frequent scourge. In 1721
it attacked nearly six thousand persons in

314 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

Boston, about half the population, killing
some nine hundred. The clergy, almost
to a man, decried vaccination when first
vented, proclaiming it an effort to thwart
God's will. Clergymen, except perhaps in
Carolina and Virginia, were somewhat bet
ter educated, yet those in New England led
all others in this respect.

Colonial America boasted many great
intellectual lights. President Edwards won
European reputation as a thinker, and so
did Franklin as a statesman and as a scien
tist. Linnaeus named our Bartram, a Quaker
farmer of Pennsylvania, the greatest natural
botanist then living. Increase Mather read
and wrote both Greek and Hebrew, and
spoke Latin. He and his son Cotton were
veritable wonders in literary attainment.
The one was the author of ninety-two
books, the other of three hundred and
eighty-three. The younger Winthrop was
a member of the Royal Society. Copley,
Stuart, and West became distinguished
painters.

Except for mails, there were in the colo-

i?5o] SOCIAL CULTURE 315

nies no public conveyances by land till just
before the Revolution. After stage lines
were introduced, to go from Philadelphia
to Pittsburgh required seven days ; from
Philadelphia to New York, at first three,
later two. The earliest coach to attain
the last-named speed was advertised as
"the flying machine." From Boston one
would be four days travelling to New York,
two to Portsmouth. Packet-boats between
the main points on the coast were as reg
ular and speedy as wind allowed. Stage-
drivers, inn-keepers, and ship-captains were
the honored and accredited purveyors of
news.

Everywhere was great prosperity, little
luxury. Paucity of money gave rise to that
habit of barter and dicker in trade which
was a mannerism of our fathers. Agricul
ture formed the basal industry, especially
in the Southern colonies ; yet in New Eng
land and Pennsylvania both manufactures
and commerce thrived. Pennsylvania's
yearly foreign commerce exceeded 1,000,000
pounds sterling, requiring 500 vessels and

3 1 6 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

more than 7,000 seamen. From Pennsyl
vania, in 1 750, 3,000 tons of pig-iron were
exported. The annual production of iron
in Maryland just before the Revolution
reached 25,000 tons of pig, 500 of bar.
The business of marine insurance began in
this country at Philadelphia in 1721, fire
insurance at Boston in 1724. New England
produced timber, ships, rum, paper, hats,
leather, and linen and woollen cloths, the
first three for export.

In country places houses were poor save
on the great estates, south, but in the cities
there were many fine mansions before i 700.
From this year stoves began to be used.
Glass windows and paper hangings were
first seen not far from 1 750.

The colonists ate much flesh, and nearly
all used tobacco and liquor freely. Finest
ladies snuffed, sometimes smoked. Little
coffee was drunk, and no tea till about
1700. Urban life was social and gay. In
the country the games of fox and geese,
three and twelve men morris, husking bees
and quilting bees were the chief sports.

1750] SOCIAL CULTURE 317

Tableware was mostly of wood, though
many had pewter, and the rich much silver.
The people's ordinary dress was of home
made cloth, but not a few country people
still wore deerskin. The clothing of the
rich was imported, and often gaudy with
tasteless ornament. Wigs were common in
the eighteenth century, and all head-dress
stupidly elaborate.

William Lang, of Boston, advertises in
1767 to provide all who wish with wigs "in
the most genteel and polite taste," assur
ing judges, divines, lawyers, and physicians,
"because of the importance of their heads,
that he can assort his wigs to suit their
respective occupations and inclinations."
He tells the ladies that he can furnish
any one of them with "a nice, easy, genteel,
and polite construction of rolls, such as may
tend to raise their heads to any pitch they
desire."

"Everybody wore wigs in 1750, except
convicts and slaves. Boys wore them, ser
vants wore them, Quakers wore them, pau
pers wore them. The making of wigs was

318 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

an important branch of industry in Great
Britain. Wigs were of many styles and
prices. Some dangled with curls ; and they
were designated by a great variety of names,
such as tyes, bobs, majors, spencers, foxtails,
twists, tetes, scratches, full-bottomed dress
bobs, cues, and perukes. The people of
Philadelphia dressed as the actors of our
theatres now dress in old English comedy.
They walked the streets in bright-colored
and highly decorated coats, three-cornered
hats, ruffled shirts and wristbands, knee-
breeches, silk stockings, low shoes, and
silver buckles."1 Lord Stirling, one of
Washington's generals, had a clothing in
ventory like a king : a " pompidou " cloth
coat and vest, breeches with gold lace, a
crimson and figured velvet coat, seven scar
let vests, et cetera, et cetera.

The wigs encountered the zealous hos
tility of many, among these Judge Samuel
Sewall. His highest eulogy on a departed
worthy was : " The welfare of the poor was
much upon his spirit, and he abominated

1 Mrs. M. J. Lamb, in Magazine of Am. History, August, 1888.

SOCIAL CULTURE

319

periwigs." A member of the church at
Newbury, Mass., refused to attend com
munion because the pastor wore a wig, be
lieving that all who were guilty of this

Chief Justice Sewall.

practice would be damned if they did not re
pent. A meeting of Massachusetts Quakers
solemnly expressed the conviction that the
wearing of extravagant and superfluous wigs
was wholly contrary to the truth.

320 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

There was an aristocracy, of its kind, in
all the colonies, but it was far the strongest
in the South. Social lines were sharply
drawn, an " Esquire" not liking to be
accosted as " Mr.," and each looking
down somewhat upon a simple " Goodman."
These gradations stood forth in college
catalogues and in the location of pews in
churches. The Yale triennial catalogue
until 1767 and the Harvard triennial till
1772 arrange students' names not alpha
betically or according to attainments, but so
as to indicate the social rank of their fam
ilies. Memoranda of President Clap, of
Yale, against the names of youth when ad
mitted to college, such as "Justice of the
Peace," " Deacon," " of middling estate much
impoverished," reveal how hard it sometimes
was properly to grade students socially. At
the South, regular mechanics, like all free
laborers, were few and despised. The in
dentured servants, very numerous in several
colonies, differed little from slaves. David
Jamieson, attorney-general of New York in
1710, had been banished from Scotland as

1750]

SOCIAL CULTURE

321

a Covenanter and sold in New Jersey as a
four years' redemptioner to pay transporta
tion expenses. Such servants were con
tinually running away, which may have
aided in abolishing the system. Paupers

The Pillory.

and criminals were fewest in New England.
All the colonies imprisoned insolvent crim
inals, though dirt and damp made each
prison a hell. All felonies were awarded
capital punishment, and many minor crimes

VOL. I. — 21

322 ENGLISH AMERICA [1750

incurred barbarous penalties. Whipping
post, pillory, and stocks were in frequent
use. So late as 1760 women were publicly
whipped. At Hartford, in 1761, David
Campbell and Alexander Pettigrew, for the
burglary of two watches, received each fif
teen stripes, the loss of the right ear, and
the brand-mark " B " on the forehead. Pet
tigrew came near losing his life from the
profuse bleeding which ensued. A husband
killing his wife was hanged. A wife killing
her husband was burned, as were slaves who
slew their masters.

In care for the unfortunate and in the
study and in all applications of social sci
ence, Philadelphia led. The Pennsylvania
Hospital, the, first institution of the kind in
America, was founded in 1751. The Phila
delphia streets were the first to be lighted ;
those of New York next ; those of Boston
not till 1773. Before the end of the period
now before us Philadelphia and New York
also had night patrols.

Signature of Jolliet (old spelling).

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA

WORKING upward from the mouth of the
St. Lawrence to the source of this and of
the Mississippi, and then down the latter
river, Franciscans and Jesuits their pioneers,

Totem of the Sioux.

braving dreadful hardships and dangers in
efforts, more courageous than successful, to
convert the Indians, the French had come
to control that great continental highway

324

ENGLISH AMERICA

[l659

and boldly to claim for France the entire
heart of North America.

In 1659, Groseilliers and Radisson pene
trated beyond Lake Superior, and dwelt
for a time amono- the Sioux, who knew of

o

the Mississippi River. Next year Groseil-

A Sioux Chief.

Hers went thither again, accompanied by
the Jesuit Menard and his servant, Guerin.
In 1661 Menard and Guerin pushed into
what is now Wisconsin, and may have seen
the Mississippi. These explorations made
the French familiar with the copper mines
of Lake Superior, and awakened the utmost

1672] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 325

zeal to see the Great River of which the
Indians spoke. La Salle probably dis
covered the Ohio in 1670, and traced it
down to the falls at Louisville. His main
eulogist holds that he even reached the
Mississippi at that time, some three years

Totem of the Illinois.

earlier than Joliet, but this is not substan
tiated. We also reject the belief that he
reached the stream by way of the Chicago
portage in 1671.

In 1672 Count Frontenac, Governor of
New France, despatched Louis Joliet to
discover the Great River. He reached the

326 ENGLISH AMERICA [1676

Strait of Mackinaw in December, and there
Pere Marquette joined him. In May, next
year, they paddled their canoes up the Fox
River and tugged them across the portage
into the Wisconsin, which they descended,
entering the Father of Waters June 17,
1673. They floated down to the mouth of
the Arkansas and then returned, their jour
ney back being up the Illinois and Des-
plaines Rivers. Joliet gave his name to
the peak on the latter stream which the
city of Joliet, 111., near by, still retains.
Joliet arrived at Quebec in August, 1674,
having in four months journeyed over
twenty-five hundred miles.

It thus became known how close the
upper waters of the great rivers, St. Law
rence and Mississippi, were to each other,
and that the latter emptied into the Gulf of
Mexico instead of the South Sea (Pacific) ;
yet, as the Rocky Mountains had not then
been discovered, it was for long believed
that some of the western tributaries of the
Great River led to that western ocean.

In 1676 Raudin, and three years later,

1682] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 329

Du Lhut, visited the Ojibwas and Sioux
west of Lake Superior. Du Lhut reached
the upper waters of the Mississippi at Sandy
Lake. He went there again in 1680. In
1682 La Salle crossed the Chicago portage
and explored the lower Mississippi all the
way to the Gulf, taking possession of the
entire valley in the name of France and
naming it Louisiana. Nicholas Perrot trav
elled by way of the Fox and Wisconsin
Rivers to the upper Mississippi in 1685, and
again in 1688. It is in his writings that the
word " Chicago " first appears in literature.
There were thus between the two great
valleys, i, the Superior route; 2, the Wis
consin and Fox route; 3, the Illinois River
route, whether by the Kankakee, La Salle's
way, or by the south branch of the Chicago
River, Joliet's way ; and 4, the route by
the Wabash and Ohio. The Wabash, too,
could be approached either from Lake Erie
or from Lake Michigan, through St. Joseph's
River. At high water, canoes often passed
from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi
without portage.

Je jMickiGcuni au JiUtiois

A Part of the Map Published in Paris by Thevenot as " Marquette's Map." It
shows the route taken by Joliet across Wisconsin from the Baie des Puans
(now Green Bay) to the Mississippi River, also part of the return journey,
that is, from the present site of Chicago, northward along Lake Michigan.

i685]

ENGLAND AND FRANCE

331

La Salle had the ambition to get to the
South Sea from the Mississippi. Governor
De la Barre, who followed Frontenac, oppos
ing him, he repaired to France, where he
succeeded in winning Louis XIV. to his

Louis XIV.

plan. At the head of a well-equipped fleet
he sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi,
reaching land near Matagorda Bay on the
first day of the year 1685. Not finding the
Mississippi, La Salle's officers mutinied.

332

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1690

The expedition broke up into parties, wan
dering here and there, distressed by Indian
attacks and by treachery among1 themselves.
La Salle was shot by his own men. Nearly
all his followers perished, but a small party
at last discovered the river and ascended it
to Fort St. Louis on the Illinois, reaching
France via Quebec. In this expedition

Coins Struck in France for the Colonies.

France took possession of Texas, nor did
she ever relinquish the claim till, in 1763,
the whole of Louisiana west of the Missis
sippi was ceded to Spain. La Salle's ill-
starred attempt led later to the planting
of French colonies by D'Iberville at Biloxi
Island, in Mobile Bay, soon abandoned, and
at Poverty Point, on the Mississippi ; and
still later to the settlement of New Orleans
and vicinity. Growth in these parts was

Assassination of La Salle.

334 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

slow, however. So late as 1713 there were
not over three hundred whites in the entire
Mississippi Valley.

By this time French traders had set foot
on every shore of the great lakes and ex
plored nearly every stream tributary thereto.
The English, pushing westward more and

New Orleans in 1719.

more, were trying to divide with them the
lucrative business of fur-trading, and each
nation sought to win to itself all the Indians
it could. The Mohawks and their confed
erates ;ol" :the Five Nations, now equipped
t anp^ajcquajnted with fire-arms, spite of alter-
\ 7)ate; pyerj/ures and threats from the French,
remained firm friends to the English, who

1690] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 335

more and more invaded those vast and
fertile western ranges. It grew to be the
great question of the age this side the At
lantic, whether England or France should
control the continent. King William's war,
declared in 1689, was therefore certain to
rage in America as well as in Europe.

One sees by a glance at the map what
advantage France had in this struggle. It
possessed the best fishing grounds and fur-
producing districts, and fish and furs were
at first the only exports of value from the
north of America. The French, too, held

Signature of D'lberville.

all the water-ways to the heart of the con
tinent. Coming up Lake Champlain they
could threaten New York and New Eng
land from the rear. The colonies farther
south they shut in almost as straitly, French
bullets whistling about any Englishman's
ears the instant he appeared beyond the
mountains.

336 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

In other respects England had the ad
vantage. In population English America
had become as superior as French America
was territorially, having 1,116,000 white in
habitants in 1 750, to about 80,000 French.
The English colonies were also more con-

o

venient to the mother-country, and the
better situated for commerce both coast
wise and across the ocean. Among the
English, temper for mere speculation and
adventure decayed very early, giving way
to the conviction that successful planting
depended wholly upon persistent, energetic
toil.

A piece of fortune more important yet
was their relatively free religious and po
litical system. Toleration in religion was
large. Self-government was nearly com
plete internally, and indeed externally, till
the navigation acts. Canada, on the other
hand, was oppressed by a feudal constitu
tion in the state, settlers being denied the
fee simple of their lands, and by Jesuits in
Church. " New France could not grow,"
says Parkman, "with a priest on guard at

i6go]

ENGLAND AND FRANCE

337

the gate to let in none but such as pleased
him. In making Canada a citadel of the

state religion, the clerical monitors of the
Crown robbed their country of a transatlan
tic empire." Thus the Huguenots, France's

VOL. I. — 22

338 ENGLISH AMERICA [1690

best emigrants to America, did not come to
New France, but to New England and the
other Protestant colonies.

The Indian hostilities which heralded
King William's War began August 13,
1688. Frontenac prepared to capture Al
bany and even Manhattan. He did not
accomplish so much ; but on the night of
February 8, 1689-90, his force of ninety Iro-
quois and over a hundred Frenchmen fell
upon Schenectady, killed sixty, and captured
eighty or ninety more. Only a corporal's
guard escaped to Albany with the sad news.
This attack had weighty influence, as occa
sioning the first American congress. Seven
delegates from various colonies assembled
at New York on May i, 1690, to devise
defence against the northern invaders.

The eastern Indians were hardly at rest
from Philip's War when roused by the
French to engage in this. An attack was
made upon Haverhill, Mass., and Hannah
Dustin, with a child only a few days old,
another woman, and a boy, was led cap
tive to an Indian camp up the Merrimac.

i69o]

ENGLAND AND FRANCE

339

The savages killed the infant, but thereby
steeled the mother's heart for revenge.
One night the three prisoners slew their
sleeping guards and, seizing a canoe, floated

Hannah Dustin's Escape

down to their home. Dover was attacked
June 27, 1689, twenty-three persons killed,
and twenty-nine sold to the French in
Canada. Indescribable horrors occurred at
Oyster River, at Salmon Falls, at Casco,
at Exeter, and elsewhere.

340 ENGLISH AMERICA [1702

In 1702 Queen Anne's War began, and
in this again New England was the chief
sufferer. The barbarities which marked it
were worse than those of Philip's War.
De Rouville, with a party of French and
savages, proceeded from Canada to Deer-
field, Mass. Fearing an attack, the vil
lagers meant to be vigilant, but early on a
February morning, 1 704, the wily enemy,
skulking till the sentinels retired at day
light, managed to effect a surprise. Fifty
were killed and one hundred hurried off to
Canada. Among these were the minister,
Mr. Williams, and his family. Twenty
years later a white woman in Indian dress
entered Deerfield. It was one of the
Williams daughters. She had married an
Indian in Canada, and now refused to de
sert him. Cases like this, of which there
were many in the course of these frightful
wars, seemed to the settlers harder to bear
than death. Massachusetts came so to dread
the atrocious foe, that fifteen pounds were
offered by public authority for an Indian
man's scalp, eight for a child's or a woman's.

1705] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 341

Governor Spotswood urged aggression
on the French to the west ; Governor

Hunter of New York had equal zeal for a
movement northward. Ncjw York raised

342 ENGLISH AMERICA [1705

600 men and the same number of Iroquois,
voting 10,000 pounds of paper money for
their sustenance. Connecticut and New
Jersey sent 1,600 men. A force of 4,000 in
all mustered at Albany under Nicholson
of New York. They were to co-operate
against Montreal with the naval expedition
of 1711, commanded by Sir Hoveden
Walker. Walker failed ignominiously, and
Nicholson, hearing of this betimes, saved
himself by retreating.

Sir William Phips had captured Port
Royal in 1690, and Acadia was annexed to
Massachusetts in 1692. In 1691 the French
again took formal possession of Port Royal
and the neighboring country. In 1692 an
ineffectual attempt was made to recover it,
but by the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697, it was
explicitly given back to France.

At the inception of Queen Anne's War,
in 1702, there were several expeditions
from New England to Nova Scotia ; in
1704 and 1707 without result. That of
1710 was more successful. It consisted of
four regiments and thirty-six vessels, besides

i7io] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 343

troop and store ships and some marines.
Port Royal capitulated, and its name was
changed to Annapolis, in honor of Queen
Anne. Acadia never again came under

-

Queen Anne.

French control, and was regularly ceded to
England by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.
Notwithstanding this, however, French
America still remained substantially intact.
If the great struggle for the Ohio Valley

344 ENGLISH AMERICA [1714

now became a silent one, it was none the
less earnest. Spotswood had opened a
road across the Blue Ridge in 1716. In
1721 New Yorkers began settling on
Oswego River, and they finished a fort
there by 1726. Closer alliance was formed
with the Five Nations. The French gov
ernor of Quebec in 1725 pleaded that Niag
ara must be fortified, and on his successor
was urged the necessity of reducing the
Oswego garrison. It was partly to flank
Oswego that the French pushed up Lake
Champlain to Crown Point and built Fort
St. Frederick.

The Treaty of Utrecht had left Cape
Breton Island to France. The French at
once strongly fortified Louisburg and
invited thither the French inhabitants of
Acadia and Newfoundland, which had also
been ceded to Great Britain. Many went,
though the British governors did much to
hinder removal. This irritated the French
authorities, and the Indian atrocities of
1723—24 at Dover and in Maine are known
to have been stimulated from Montreal.

1745] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 345

Father Rasle, an astute and benevolent
French Jesuit who had settled among the
Indians at Norridgewock, became an agent
of this hostile influence. In an English

Governor Shirley.

attack, August 12, 1724, Rasle's settlement
was broken up and himself killed. The
Indians next year made a treaty, and peace
prevailed till King George's War.

This opened in 1744, England against
France once more, and in 1745 came the

ENGLISH AMERICA [1745

capture of Louisburg, then the Gibraltar of
America. This was brought about through
the energy of Governor Shirley, of Massa
chusetts, the most efficient English com-

Sir William Pepperrell.

mander this side the Atlantic. That
commonwealth voted to send 3,250 men,
Connecticut 500, New Hampshire and
Rhode Island each 300. Sir William Pep
perrell, of Kittery, Me., commanded, Rich
ard Gridley, of Bunker Hill fame, being

1746] ENGLAND AND FRANCE 347

his chief of artillery. The expedition
consisted of thirteen armed vessels, com
manded by Captain Edward Tyng, with
over 200 guns, and about ninety transports.
The Massachusetts troops sailed from
Nantasket March 24th, and reached Canso,
April 4th. " Rhode Island," says Hutchin-
son, " waited until a better judgment could
be made of the event, their three hundred
not arriving until after the place had sur
rendered." The expedition was very costly
to the colonies participating, and four
years later England reimbursed them in
the sum of ,£200,000. Yet at the disgrace
ful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, she
surrendered Louisburg and all Cape Breton
to France again.

In 1746 French and Indians from Crown
Point destroyed the fort and twenty houses
at Saratoga, killing thirty persons, and cap
turing sixty. Orders came this year from
England to advance on Crown Point and
Montreal, upon Shirley's plan, all the colo
nies as far south as Virginia being com
manded to aid. Quite an army mustered

348 ENGLISH AMERICA [1748

at Albany. Sir William Johnson succeeded
in rousing the Iroquois, whom the French
had been courting with unprecedented as
siduity. But D'Anville's fleet threatened.
The colonies wanted their troops at home.
Inactivity discouraged the soldiers, alienated
the Indians. At last news came that the
Canada project was abandoned, and in 1748
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was declared.

This very year France began new efforts
to fill the Ohio Valley with emigrants.
Virginia did the same. To anticipate the
English, the French sent Bienville to bury
engraved leaden plates at the mouths of
streams. They also fortified the present
sites of Ogdensburg and Toronto. Even
now, therefore, France's power this side the
Atlantic was not visibly shaken. The con
tinental problem remained unsolved.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

THE Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had been
made only because the contestants were
tired of fighting. In America, at least,
each at once began taking breath and pre
paring to renew the struggle. Not a year
passed that did not witness border quar
rels more or less bloody. The French
authorities filled the Ohio and Missis
sippi valleys with military posts ; English
settlers pressed persistently into the same
to find homes. In this movement Vir
ginia led, having in 1748 formed, espe
cially to aid western settlement, the Ohio
Company, which received from the king a
grant of five hundred thousand acres be
yond the Alleghanies. A road was laid
out between the upper Potomac and the
present Pittsburgh, settlements were begun

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1748

along it, and efforts made to conciliate the
savages.

One of the frontier villages was at what

is now Franklin, Penn., and the location
involved Virginia with the colony of Penn-

The Ambuscade.

1754] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 353

sylvania. As commissioner to settle the
dispute George Washington was sent out.

The future Father of his Country was
of humble origin. Born in Westmoreland
County, Va., "about ten in ye morning of
ye nth day of February, 1731-32," as re
corded in his mother's Bible, he had been
an orphan from his earliest youth. His
education was of the slenderest. At six
teen he became a land surveyor, leading a
life of the roughest sort, beasts, savages,
and hardy frontiersmen his constant com
panions, sleeping under the sky and cook
ing his own coarse food. No better man
could have been chosen to thread now the
Alleghany trail.

Washington reported the French strongly
posted in western Pennsylvania on lands
claimed by the Ohio Company. Virginia
fitted out an expedition to dislodge them.
Of this Washington commanded the ad
vance. Meeting at Great Meadows the
French under Contrecceur, commander of
Fort Du Quesne (Pittsburgh), he was at
first victorious, but the French were re-

VOL. I. — 23

354

ENGLISH AMERICA

[1754

enforced before he was, and Washington,
after a gallant struggle, had to capitulate.

Braddock's Route.

This was on July 3, 1754. The French
and Indian War had begun.

1755] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 355

The English Government bade the colo
nies defend their frontier, and in this inter
est twenty-five delegates from the seven
northern colonies met at Albany on June
19, 1754. Benjamin Franklin represented
Pennsylvania, and it was at this conference
that he presented his well-considered plan,
to be described in our chapter on Indepen
dence, for a general government over Eng
lish America. The Albany Convention
amounted to little, but did somewhat to
renew alliance with the Six Nations.1

In this decisive war England had in view
four great objects of conquest in America:
i. Fort Du Quesne ; 2. The Ontario basin
with Oswego and Fort Niagara ; 3. The
Champlain Valley ; 4. Louisburg. The Brit
ish ministry seemed in earnest. It sent
Sir Edward Braddock to this side with six
thousand splendidly equipped veterans, and
offered large sums for fitting out regiments
of provincials. Braddock arrived in Feb
ruary, 1755, but moved very languidly.
This was not altogether his fault, for he

1 Increased from five to six by the accession of the Tuscaroras.

356

ENGLISH AMERICA

[i755

had difficulties with the governors and they
with their legislatures.

At last off for Fort Du Quesne, he took
a needlessly long route, through Virginia
instead of Pennsylvania. He scorned ad-

Map of Braddock's Field.

vice, marching and fighting stiffly according
to the rules of the Old World military art,
heeding none of Franklin's and Washing
ton's sage hints touching savage modes of
warfare. The consequence was this brave
Briton's defeat and death. As he drew
near to Fort Du Quesne, he fell into a care-

The Death of Braddock

1755] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 359

fully prepared ambuscade. Four horses
were shot under him. Mounting a fifth
he spurred to the front to inspire his men,
forbidding them seek the slightest cover,
as Washington urged and as the provin
cials successfully did. The regulars, obey
ing, were half of them killed in their tracks,
the remainder retreating, in panic at first,
to Philadelphia. Braddock died, and was
buried at Great Meadows, where his grave
is still to be seen.

Washington was the only mounted offi
cer in this action who was not killed or
fatally wounded, a fact at the time regarded
specially providential. On his return, aged
twenty-three, the Rev. Samuel Davies, after
ward President' of the College of New Jer
sey, referred to him in his sermon as " that
heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I
cannot but hope Providence has preserved
in so signal a manner for some important
service to his country."

The early part of this war witnessed the
tragic occurrence immortalized by Long
fellow's " Evangeline," the expulsion of the

360 ENGLISH AMERICA [1757

French from Acadia. The poem is too
favorable to these people. They had never
become reconciled to English rule, and
were believed on strong evidence to be
active in promoting French schemes against
the English. It was resolved to scatter
them among the Atlantic settlements. The
act was savage, and became doubly so
through the unmeant cruelties attending
its execution. The poor wretches were
huddled on the shore weeks too soon for
their transports. Families were broken up,
children forcibly separated from parents.
The largest company was carried to Mas
sachusetts, many to Pennsylvania, some to
the extreme South. Not a few, crushed
in spirit, became paupers, A number found
their way to France, a number to Louisiana,
a handful back to Nova Scotia.

Braddock was succeeded by the fussy
and incompetent Earl of Loudon, 1756-57,
whom Franklin likened to Saint George
on the sign-posts, " always galloping but
never advancing." He gathered twelve
thousand men for the recapture of Lou-

1757] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 361

isburg, but exaggerated reports of the
French strength frightened him from the
attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort

Montcalm.

William Henry on Lake George. The
end of the year 1757 saw the English
cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm,
the tried and brilliant French commander,

362

ENGLISH AMERICA

[i757

having outwitted or frightened the English
officers at every point.

From this moment all changes. William
Pitt, subsequently Lord Chatham, now
became the soul of the British ministry.

William Pitt.

George III. had dismissed him therefrom
in 1757, but Newcastle found it impossi
ble to get on without him. The great
commoner had to be recalled, this time to
take entire direction of the war.

I758J THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 363

Pitt had set his mind on the conquest
of Canada. He superseded Loudon early
in 1758 by General Amherst, who was
seconded by Wolfe and by Admiral Bos-
cawen, both with large re-enforcements.
They were to reduce Louisburg. It was
an innovation to assign important com
mands like these to men with so little
fame and influence, but Pitt did not care.
He believed his appointees to be brave,
energetic, skilful, and the event proved
his wisdom. Louisburg fell, and with it
the whole of Cape Breton Island and also
Prince Edward.

Unfortunately General Abercrombie had
not been recalled with Loudon. The
same year, 1758, he signally failed to
capture Ticonderoga, leaving the way
to Montreal worse blocked than before.
Fort Du Quesne, however, General Forbes
took this year at little cost, rechris-
tening it Pittsburgh in honor of the
heroic minister who had ordered the enter
prise.

In the year 1759 occurred a grand triple

ENGLISH AMERICA

[i759

movement upon Canada. Amherst, now
general-in-chief, was to clear the Champlain

General Wolfe.

Valley, and Prideaux with large colonial
forces to reduce Fort Niagara. Both had

1759] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 365

orders, being successful in these initial
attacks, to move down the St. Lawrence
and unite with Wolfe, who was to sail up
that river and beset Quebec. Prideaux
was splendidly successful, as indeed was
Amherst in time, though longer than he
anticipated in securing Ticonderoga and
Crown Point.

Meantime Wolfe at Quebec was trying in
all ways to manoeuvre the crafty Montcalm
out of his impregnable works. Failing, he
in his eagerness suffered himself to attempt
an assault upon the city, which proved not
only vain but terribly costly. A weaker
commander would now have given up, but
Wolfe had red hair, and the grit usually
accompanying. Undaunted, he planned the
hazardous enterprise of rowing up the St.
Lawrence by night, landing with five thou
sand picked men at the foot of the precipi
tous ascent to the Plains of Abraham, and
scaling those heights to face Montcalm from
the west. The Frenchman, stunned at the
sight which day brought him, lost no time
in attacking. In the hot battle which en-

366 ENGLISH AMERICA [i?59

sued, September 13, 1759, both commanders
fell, Wolfe cheering his
heroes to sure victory,
Montcalm urging on his
forlorn hope in vain. The
English remained masters
of the field and
in five days
Quebec capitu
lated.

Vaudreuil,
the French

Landing of Wolfe.

r76o] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 367

commander at Montreal, sought to dislodge
the English ere the ice left the river in the

spring of 1760, and succeeded in driving
them within their works. Each side then
waited and hoped for help from beyond sea

368 ENGLISH AMERICA [1763

so soon as navigation. opened. It came the
earlier to the English, who were gladdened
on May nth by the approach of a British
frigate, the forerunner of a fleet. They
now chased Vaudreuil back into Montreal,
where they were met by Haviland from
Crown Point and by Amherst from Oswego.
France's days of power in America were
ended. Her fleet of twenty-two sail in
tended for succor met total destruction in
the Bay des Chaleurs, and by the Peace of
Paris, 1 763, she surrendered to her victori
ous antagonist every foot of her American
territory east of the Mississippi, save the
city of New Orleans.

The Indians were thus left to finish this
war alone. Pontiac, the brave and cunning
chief of the Ottawas, aghast at the rising
might of the English, and the certain fate
of his race without the French for helpers,
organized a conspiracy including nearly
every tribe this side the Mississippi except
the Six Nations, to put to the sword all the
English garrisons in the West. Fatal suc
cess waited upon the plan. It was in 1763.

1763] THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 369

Forts Sandusky, St. Joseph (southeast of
Lake Michigan), Miami (Fort Wayne),
Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.), Le Boeuf, Ve-
nango, and Pittsburgh were attacked and

Bouquet's Redoubt at Pittsburgh.

all but the last destroyed, soldiers and set
tlers murdered with indescribable barbari
ties. Pittsburgh held out till re-enforced,
at dreadful cost in blood, by Colonel Bou
quet and his Highlanders, who marched
from Philadelphia.

VOL. I. — 24

3?o ENGLISH AMERICA [1763

The hottest and longest conflict was
at Detroit, Major Gladwyn commanding,
where Pontiac himself led the onset, head
ing perhaps a thousand men. The siege
was maintained with fearful venom from
May nth till into October. The English
tried a number of sallies, brave, fatal, vain,
and were so hard pressed by their blood
thirsty foe that only timely and repeated
re-enforcements saved them. At last the
savages, becoming, as always, disunited and
straitened for supplies, sullenly made peace ;
and at the call of the rich and now free
Northwest, caravans of English immigrants
thronged thither to lay under happiest
auspices the foundations of new States.

END OF VOLUME T.

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